How to Recover Deleted Photos from Computer? | Windows & Mac

"The photos on my computer were extremely disorganized. So, I decided to move them around a little bit to organize them. During this process, I have accidentally deleted an entire folder with photos worth 1GB. Are my photos still on the system? If so, how do I recover deleted photos from the computer? Please help!"

Another user lost photos because of corruption.

"My hard drive seems to be corrupt due to a virus infection. I am not able to find some of the photos that were stored in the drive. Also can’t find them in Recycle Bin. Are they permanently deleted or can I restore them anyhow? How can I recover the deleted photos from my system?"

Usually, we tend to keep our important data that might consist of photos on our laptops' or computers’ hard drives. Accidental deletion of photos is one of the most common problems many users struggle with on a regular basis. Moreover, some users have the habit of emptying their PC recycle bin or Trash to free up storage space.

Again if you have used  "Shift + Delete" to remove the photos, they are considered permanently deleted. In such complex scenarios, users find no way to recover the deleted photos from the desktop. Fortunately, there is no need to panic if you are stuck in this situation. Here, in this post, you will get to know about effective ways to recover deleted photos from computers.

One of the easiest and most convenient solutions is to use a professional photo recovery tool to retrieve deleted photos from a hard drive, laptop, or PC.  In case, you are looking for recovering deleted photos from an external storage device like an SD card then you can refer to this info.

Through this blog post, you will gain an understanding of both the built-in tools like File History, Time Machine, etc to recover deleted photos from a computer as well as using a specialized and reliable data recovery tool; Remo Recover.

Can I Recover Deleted Photos from My Computer?

Yes, it is possible to recover deleted photos from a computer. Even if you have shift deleted your photos from the computer hard drive, fortunately, there is a way to get back deleted pictures from the PC. This is possible because even though the deleted files are not visible to you but digital footprints of the images are still present on the PC hard drive. Your computer has just marked the deleted photos space as reusable and they are ready to be overwritten.

So it is important to note that you must stop using the drive, partition, or device as soon as you realize that you have deleted any photo. Otherwise, the deleted pictures' space will be overwritten thereby reducing the chances of photo recovery. 

Be it accidentally deleted photos, loss of photos due to virus attacks, corruption, data transfer, or any reason; Remo Photo Recovery can recover photos from a computer in any data loss situation. Recover JPG, JPEG, PNG, PSD, GIF, TIFF, or RAW images using this highly effective photo recovery software for PC or Mac!

If you’re a Mac user and want to recover deleted photos, go directly to the section recover deleted photos on Mac.

How do I Recover Permanently Deleted Photos from my Windows Computer?

Follow the below-mentioned solutions to recover all the deleted or lost pictures from a Windows PC.

Solution 1: Recover Deleted Photos from the Computer’s Recycle Bin

In most cases, photos deleted from the computer are moved to the Recycle Bin. So, the first place to check for deleted photos is the Recycle Bin.

• Go to the ‘Recycle Bin’ folder and see if you find your photos there

• If you find them, right-click on it and click ‘Restore’

• Now the photos will be recovered to the original location

If you don’t find the folder in the Recycle Bin, it could mean that the folder you deleted was too large and may have bypassed the Recycle Bin (sometimes without any notification). In that case, Remo Photo Recovery software can recover deleted photos from a laptop or desktop.

Solution 2: Recover Deleted Photos From PC Using the File History Feature

Note: This works only if you have a File History backup feature enabled on your Windows computer before the photos got deleted.

1. Go to the folder from where your photos were deleted
2. On the ‘Home’ tab, click ‘History’ to open the File History window
3. Go through the various libraries and folders in File History to find the photos you want to recover
4. Find the desired version of the file by using the left and right arrows
5. Finally, click ‘Restore’ to restore your photos

Solution 3: Using Photo Recovery Software for Windows Computer

Remo Photo Recovery offers a perfect way to recover deleted photos from a computer. You can also use it to successfully recover deleted pictures on any device from various data loss scenarios like :

• When photos are accidentally deleted or when deleted using "Shift + Delete". Know how to recover any file that is permanently deleted using Shift delete.
• If you are unable to find the photos in Recycle Bin you can make use of this digital media recovery software
• This photo recovery software can also recover the photos that are lost during 'cut and paste' or deleted using the command prompt
• To recover lost photos on PC during failed data transfer to storage devices
• Restore the photos that are deleted or removed due to severe virus or malware attack
• You can even use Remo Photo Recovery software to retrieve photos from a formatted computer

How to Recover Deleted Photos from Computer using Remo Photo Recovery Tool?

To recover deleted photos from a computer or laptop hard drive download Remo Photo Recovery software on your computer and install the software. From the main screen, select ‘Recover Photos’, choose the drive from which you’d like to recover photos, and click ‘Scan’. Now, all the photos in the drive will be listed. Select the photos you need and save them in the desired location.

You can even restore photos lost because of formatting the hard drive or laptop using this tool.

Here in this 2-minute video tutorial, you will learn how to recover deleted photos from laptop or desktop computers.

How to Recover Deleted Photos on Mac Computer?

Here are a few solutions using which you can restore lost photos from a Mac Computer or laptop. To know more about how to retrieve lost images from a Mac laptop refer to this info. 

Solution 1: Retrieve Deleted Photos from Macintosh Computer Trash

Before we get into the Time Machine feature (which is the main backup and restore utility on Mac), let’s look in the ‘Trash’ folder to try and recover deleted photos from the computer.

If you find photos in the Trash, select and right-click on them. Then click on ‘Put Back’ to restore them to the original location. Also, learn how to recover photos from the Recycle Bin.

Solution 2: Using Time Machine backup

If you’ve been using Time Machine as your backup strategy in Mac, there’s no need for you to worry at all. Time Machine will have a backup of all photos that were accidentally deleted and you can easily get back deleted photos on Mac.

1. Connect the Time Machine backup drive to your Mac computer
2. Go to the ‘Applications’ folder and launch ‘Time Machine’
3. Find the ‘Photos’ folder in Time Machine (You can also click ‘Package Contents’ to recover specific photos or the entire Photos library will be recovered)
4. Go back in time to see when your photos were present in the ‘Photos’ folder before getting deleted
5. Control-click on ‘Photos Library’ and select ‘Restore Photos Library’
6. Click ‘Restore’ to restore the entire Photos library

Solution 3: Using Remo Photo Recovery software for Mac

Remo Recover is a great way to recover deleted photos on a Mac computer. It can recover permanently deleted photos or recover lost photos on Mac in case of data transfer, due to virus attacks and other reasons. With support for recovery of all photo formats and support for both Mac laptops & desktops, Remo Recover is widely preferred.

Note: Remo Recover can also be used to recover deleted photos from Mac Book Pro, Mac Book Air, Mac Book, Mac Mini, iMac, etc. Remo recovery comes in handy to recover photos from mac trash folder.

Create a Backup Plan and Abide by it to Avoid Loss of Photos

Accidentally deleting photos, losing photos due to virus/malware, or other reasons cannot be avoided and happens to the best of us. By having a backup in place at all times, your photos will be safe even when you lose one of those backup copies. But due to unfortunate accidents, when you lose the original copy of photos, Remo Recover can easily recover deleted photos from the computer.

From external hard drives to cloud storage, there are tons of backup options available for you. You can either purchase an external hard drive and save all your photos to it on a regular basis. Or you can choose cloud storage options like Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, etc.