9 Best Photo Recovery Software | Expert choice

Losing photos is common but recovering them depends on the method or software you select. Finding the best photo recovery software to recover your permanently deleted photos is not easy. On many web pages, you can find a big list of photo recovery tools irrespective of their poor performance. This can create a lot of confusion on what photo recovery software to prioritize for restoring photos, raw images, videos, and other media files.

To help you know what is the best photo recovery software, we have analyzed and tested 5 renowned photo recovery tools on various parameters.  

• User interface
• Price
• Speed
• Compatibility
• Supported devices
• Performance under various data loss scenarios (permanent deletion, corruption, formatting, interruptions while transferring photos, or Recycle Bin recovery).

Make use of the pros and cons section specified for each software to find out the best photo recovery software for you and your deleted images.

Which is the Best Photo Recovery Software?

1. Remo Recover software

Remo Recover is a user-friendly photo recovery tool to restore photos of any format. Such as PNG, JPEG, BMP, NEF, ORF, raw images, and many more. Moreover, the Remo Photo Recovery tool is free to download and can help you recover photos on various devices such as digital camera, SD card, Windows/ Mac computer, SSD, USB drive, or external hard drive, etc.

Source: Trustpilot

Pros:

• Remo Recover has a dedicated Photo recovery option to restore deleted  images from any device.
• The tool allows you to preview the recovered photos and videos for free even before you actually save them.
• It easily recovers photos and media files from various data loss scenarios. Such as permanently deleted or lost photos, formatted a drive, corruption, unreadable internal or external device.
• Remo Photo Recovery tool is compatible with all the versions of Windows and Mac operating systems including the latest Windows 11, 10, and macOS Ventura.
• It recovers photos captured on various devices like a digital camera, camcorder, DSLR, CCTV, Drone, Android phone, etc.

Cons:

• The speed of the scanning time depends on the complexity of the data loss scenario and the amount of data you lost. The speed of the photo recovery process increases if the severity of the photo loss situation is less.
• This photo recovery tool doesn’t support recovery from the Android phone’s internal memory. However, you can easily get back images from the micro/ SD card of the mobile phone or a camera.

How to Recover Permanently Deleted photos?

Step 1: Launch Remo Recover software on your computer and connect the drive from where you want to recover data.
Step 2:  Choose the drive and click on the Scan option.
Note: If you are unable to find the external storage device you wish to recover data from, click on the Can't Find the Drive option.

Step 3: Once the Quick Scan completes the tool will automatically initiate Deep scan where the tool scans the drive sector by sector. You will simultaneously be able to recover the photos by going to the Dynamic Recovery View, where all the recovered photos will be displayed.

Step 4: You will be able to Preview the files which are being recovered.

Step 5: Select the photos you want to get back and click the Recover option to restore them to any location of your choice.

2. Recuva

Recuva Photo Recovery tool easily restores deleted files, photos, and compressed data. This photo recovery software has an old-fashioned and a bit complicated user interface. Using this tool, you can easily recover photos from simple data loss scenarios such as photos lost or accidentally deleted.

Pros:

• Recuva is less expensive than the other photo recovery software.
• It can easily recover deleted photos and documents from the computer.
• This software has a Deep Scan option to recover files that cannot be restored using Quick Scan.
• It is compatible with Windows 8 and its previous version of operating systems.
• Recuva Photo Recovery has a dedicated option to recover pictures of various formats.

Cons: 

• It cannot recover entire photos lost under severe data loss scenarios like SD card formatting or corruption, photos lost while transferring, etc.
• The interface of this photo recovery software is complicated and old-fashioned.
• It cannot recover photos based on time or specific period.

3. Yodot Photo Recovery tool

Yodot Photo Recovery is an easy-to-use software designed to help novice users to restore photos under various data loss scenarios. It has customized options (Recover Deleted Photos and Recover Lost Photos) for its users to make the photo recovery process simple. The tool is also free from any virus or malware attack and recovers photos captured on any digital camera or camcorder with ease.

Pros:

• Yodot Photo Recovery software allows you to preview the recovered photos from the computer.
• It enables you to prioritize the recovery based on the photo file format you want to restore. This can eliminate the recovery of unnecessary file formats.
• The tool can easily compress the data or photos you want to save in a ZIP file format.
• The software is also available for Mac operating systems.

Cons:

• The tool cannot recover photos from the Android phone or iPhone.
• Unlike Remo Recover software, its scanning time is much longer.
• It does not have an Advanced or Deep Scan feature.

4. Easeus Data Recovery software

Easeus Data Recovery is designed with a simple interface to restore data from multiple devices. And it is one of the renowned tools to recover files on a computer. This software doesn’t provide a dedicated option to recover photos since it majorly focuses on data as a whole. However, using the filter, you can sort your photos out of the entire recovered data based on the file extension.

Pros:

• It can recover photos from a formatted hard drive.
• It can recover multiple photo file formats. Such as SR2, MRW, DCR, WMF, RAW, SWF, SVG, RAF, and DNG.
• Supports photo recovery from FAT 32 and NTFS file systems.
• It is compatible with Windows 8 and 7.

Cons:

• There is no dedicated option provided to recover photos compared to Yodot and Remo Photo Recovery.
• The interface is majorly designed to help users to recover data as a whole. And not to help users to recover a specific data format. Such as photos, videos, audio files, or documents.
• Easeus photo recovery software cannot save the recovered photos on the same drive.

5. Stellar Photo Recovery software

Stellar Photo Recovery software is designed with a simple user interface. And it can recover various file formats such as photos, audio files, text files, etc. This tool has a Deep Scan feature to recover photos from a camera under various complex scenarios.

Pros:

• The tool can recover photos from a corrupt or formatted hard drive.
• It can easily recover raw-photo formats like CR2, RAF, PEF, NRW, K25, SR2, etc.
• It has the Add File Type option that allows users to add the desired file format that is not supported by the software.
• Similar to Remo Recover software, the Stellar Photo Recovery tool also supports data recovery from Bitlocker encrypted drive.
• It is compatible with Windows 8.1, 8, 7, and its previous versions.

Cons:

• Stellar photo recovery software takes a long time to restore photos from formatting, corruption, or inaccessible drive.
• It does not support photo recovery from an iPhone or Android mobile phone.
• The tool cannot recover photos from two different drives (let’s say D and E drive) at once.
• The standard version of this tool doesn’t extract thumbnails of severely corrupt photos such as JPEGs, PNGs, etc. It charges premium pricing to unlock normal features.

6. Disk Drill Photo Recovery

Disk Drill Photo Recovery Clever files is a Powerful photo recovery feature. It can recover deleted or lost photos, as well as other types of files, from a variety of devices including cameras, memory cards, and hard drives. 

Pros:

• Disk Drill has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to use even for beginners. You don’t need any technical expertise to use the software.
• Disk Drill supports a wide range of file formats, including popular image file formats such as JPG, PNG, BMP, and GIF.
• Disk drill uses a deep scan feature that can recover photos from damaged or formatted drives that other software may not be able to recover.
• The software allows you to preview the recovered photos before saving them.

Cons:

• The software is not free, and you will need to pay for a licence to access its full features.
• The free trial versions of Disk Drill only allow you to recover up to 500MB of data This can be limiting if you need to recover a large volume of data.
• Disk Drill is primarily designed for use on Mac and Windows operating systems. It may not be compatible with other operating systems.

7. Recoverit Photo Recovery

A recoverit photo recovery is a software tool designed to help users recover lost, deleted, or corrupted photos from a variety of devices, including digital cameras, memory cards, USB drives, and computer hard drives.

Pros:

• The software has a user-friendly interface, making it easy to navigate and use, even for non-technical users.
• Recoverit photo recovery offers multiple recovery options, including a quick scan, deep scan, and recovery from formatted or damaged devices.
• The software can recover various image file formats, including JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, and more.
• Recoverit photo recovery allows users to preview recovered files before they are restored, helping to ensure that the correct files are recovered.
• The software comes with customer support via phone, email, or chat, which can be helpful for resolving any issues or concerns.

Cons:

• The free version of Recoverit photo recovery has limited features and can only recover up to 100MB of data.
• The deep scan option can be quite slow, especially if the device being scanned has a large amount of data.
• While Recoverit photo recovery can recover any lost or deleted photos, it is not always successful in every case.
• The full version of the software can be expensive, especially for those who only need to use it occasionally.
• The software may not be compatible with all devices or operating systems, which could limit its usefulness for some users.

8. Photo Rescue

Photo Rescue is a software program designed to recover digital photos and other multimedia files that have been accidentally deleted or lost due to various reasons such as formatting, virus attack, or system failure.

Pros:

• Photo Rescue is user-friendly software with a simple interface, making it easy for even novice users to navigate and recover lost data.
• The software uses advanced algorithms to scan the storage media and recover lost data quickly and efficiently, ensuring that users can retrieve their valuable photos and multimedia files.
• Photo Rescue supports a wide range of file formats and can recover files from various devices such as digital cameras, memory cards, USB drives, and hard drives.
• The software is safe to use and does not overwrite or damage existing data during the recovery process.

Cons:

• The trial version of Photo Rescue only allows users to recover a limited number of files, and users need to purchase the full version to recover all lost files.
• The full version of Photo Rescue can be expensive, which may deter some users from purchasing it.
• There is no guarantee that Photo Rescue will be able to recover all lost files, especially if the data has been overwritten or damaged.
• Although Photo Rescue is easy to use, users may need some technical knowledge to understand the recovery options and settings

9. R-Studio

R-Studio is a powerful data recovery software that is widely used to recover lost or deleted files from various storage devices. One of its key features is the ability to recover digital photos that have been deleted or lost due to formatting, virus attacks, or other types of data corruption.

Pros:

• R-Studio supports a wide range of file systems, including NTFS, FAT, exFAT, ReFS, HFS+, APFS, and more. This means it can be used to recover photos from a variety of storage devices, including hard drives, SSDs, USB drives, memory cards, and more.
• R-Studio can perform a deep scan of the storage device to recover lost or deleted photos. This can help recover photos that were lost due to formatting, virus attacks, or other reasons.
• R-Studio has a preview feature that allows you to view the recovered photos before you save them. This can be useful in determining whether the photos have been recovered correctly.
• R-Studio has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to navigate and use.

Cons:

• R-Studio is not free software. While it offers a free trial, the full version can be quite expensive.
• R-Studio can be difficult to use for beginners and may require some time to learn and master.
• R-Studio's support is limited to online documentation and email support. There is no phone or live chat support available.
• While R-Studio is a powerful tool, it may not always be successful in recovering all lost or deleted photos. The success of recovery also depends on the condition of the storage device and the extent of data loss.

Frequently Asked Question?

Final Words:

As you know how important it is to recover your deleted or lost photos. An unreliable photo recovery tool not only fails to restore the permanently deleted images but can also damage them. The best way to avoid any photo loss scenario is by taking a backup of them in a specific folder or external device. However, under permanent data loss scenarios, you cannot recover images without making use of reliable software. 

Before you make any decision on what photo recovery software to select, evaluate the renowned tools under different parameters along with the successful recovery rate. Refer to this article before you make a call on a photo recovery software since it has what you should know if you want to claim any photo recovery software as the best.