Mac Photo Recovery Due to Accidental Deletion

Mac Photo/Image Recovery Due to Accidental Deletion

Q. After taking pictures of my family gathering, I was trying to preview the photos, on my digital camera, using the in-built Preview function. Since, the Preview, and the Delete All buttons were beside each other, I clicked the Delete All button, by mistake, resulting in deletion of all my photos. I really need those photos. I am using a Mac book. Can the deleted photos be recovered?

A. Accidental deletion of photos, from a Mac book.

Most digital cameras have an in-built Preview option, that lets the user, preview the photos he has captured, and gives the user an option of either keeping the photos, or deleting them directly from the camera. Most camera manufacturers also include a Delete All option, within the camera, that lets the user delete all the photos from the camera, just in case he finds, that the memory is not enough, for further capture of photos.

The Delete All option is something that the user has to be careful of, while using the digital camera. This is because, the user is sometimes not sure of the photos present in the camera, and is late in realizing that he has lost the photos he needed, after selecting the Delete All option. The user might then get anxious, and try different methods to get back the lost photos, and end up deleting all the photos permanently from the camera.

The first thing to do, is to stay calm, and avoid trying any “Do it yourself” methods, as this may lead to more disastrous consequences. The next precaution that you must take, is to make sure, that you stop using the camera, remove the flash memory card from it, seal it, and store it separately. Now, get yourself a good photo recovery software, that ensures efficient recovery of photos.

Since you are using a Mac Notebook, I would recommend Disk Doctors Photo Recovery (Mac) software, for recovery of your lost photos. The software uses an advanced signature search algorithm, for locating the deleted image files, and recovers them efficiently. Apart from the recovery of deleted photos, it can also recover lost/deleted audio and video files. Try it Now!

Important!
Install the software first, and then connect the flash memory card to the laptop, using a card reader. If the laptop fails to detect the memory card, try connecting it to another computer. This is to ensure, that the memory card and the cables do not have any physical damage and they are firmly connected. Steps to recover photos using Disk Doctors Photo Recovery (Mac) software

Follow the simple steps given below, to recover the lost photos from your digital camera,

Step 1: Launch the application, by selecting it from the application folder. The Main window pops up as shown in Figure a. The local and the external drives that are detected are displayed as shown in the figure. Select the flash drive that you connected, and click on the Next button, to proceed to the next step.

Figure a: Main window

Step 2: On clicking the Next button, a new window pops up, as shown Figure b. The various types of photo files, audio files, and video files, that can be recovered, are displayed, as shown in the figure. You can select specifically, the file types you wish to recover, or select all the file types, if you wish to recover all the media files, based on your requirement.

Note: By default, all the photo, audio and video files are selected for recovery. You can disable this feature, by clicking the Deselect all button.

Figure b: Select file types

Step 3: After selecting the file types, click on the Recover button, to start the recovery process. A new window displays, the progress made in the recovery process, and also lists the number of files that have been found, as shown in Figure c.

You can use the Show selected file types option, to display the file types you selected in the previous step.

Figure c: Scanning in progress

Step 4: Once the scanning process is completed, the recovered media files are grouped together and listed in their respective folders, as shown in Figure d. Clicking any of the folder displays, the recovered files of the respective file type, under that folder, as shown in the figure.

Figure d: Found files and folders

Step 5: Once the files are recovered, you can select a particular file, and click on the View button, to preview the image, as shown in Figure e.

Preview

Figure e: Preview

Step 6: The last step is to save all the recovered media files to a destination drive. You can select specific files for saving, or, click on the Select All button, to select all the files that have been recovered.

Click the Save button, and select the destination drive, onto which you want the files to be saved, as shown in Figure f. You can also use the Save scan info button to save information about a particular scan task.