Hey, everyone! I thought I'd switch it up today and write about something a little different that may be of use to anyone who enjoys photography.

What would you do if you lost every single photo that you have taken on your last photo outing?
Have you ever spent the day taking photographs only to return home to upload your digital files to your computer only to discover that your memory card has been corrupted? Gasp, noooooo!!! 
Perhaps in the process of swapping one memory card for another in your camera, you might've accidentally deleted or worse yet formatted that memory card filled with photos that you did not want to lose. Doh!!!
Maybe, you've accidentally trashed that folder on your laptop containing all of those precious photos that you meant to save. Yikes! 

All of these scenarios are photographers worst nightmare, particularly if being a photographer is your actual job, lol!
If this sounds like you, today is your lucky day because I have found the solution to help you recover your digital photo files that were lost.

The company is called Card Rescue. 
This software program allows you to recover digital files that have been stored on your hard drive or on your memory card that have been corrupted, unintentionally deleted or formatted.

The process to restore your digital photos is fairly simple and straightforward. 

1. Go to the Card Rescue website and download the software onto your computer. No, the service is not free but if for the price of $39.95 you're able to recover your lost photos something like this is priceless in my book!

https://www.cardrescue.com

2. Insert your camera's SD card into the card reader.

3. Open up the Card Rescue software on your desktop.

4. Locate the card reader containing your lost files in the Card Rescue Console. This is found under the select a drive option. You can also search for deleted folders or files that were deleted on your computer on this screen.
 If for some reason you do not see your drive listed as an option in the drop-down menu and are a Mac user here's a helpful link to help you locate the correct storage drive.  https://www.cardrescue.com/support/note.asp?content=driveselection

5. Verify the types of files you want to retrieve such as JPEG's, TIFF's, MOV files etc.

6. Choose your destination folder where you're recovered photo files will be stored once the scan is complete.

7. Click "Next" and the scan to locate your last photo files will start. This process may take 10 to 20 minutes depending on how fast your hard drive operates and how many photos are actually still stored secretly on your memory card or on the hard drive of your computer.

8. Go pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit back relax and wait for the magic to happen!

9.  I'm serious, relax. This is going to work I promise!

10. What's the scan is complete you receive a message indicating how many files were found press the "Next" button to preview them.

11. Click on the files that you want to preview or hit select all and then push the "Next" button to save all of the recovered photo files in your destination folder.

12. Your photos will now be saved in your recovery folder and are ready for viewing.

13. Click the finish button and you're done! 

By the way, don't be surprised if you see photos that you have taken a few months ago as it is not uncommon for stored data to remain on the card for much longer than anticipated. Even if you have deleted or formatted your memory card multiple times it is quite possible to recover photos that were captured weeks or months beforehand.

One more thing to note, the RAW file data is not recoverable however the RAW images that you may have taken are recoverable and will be converted into TIFF files upon recovery process which of course may still be used in most photo editing applications and converted into JPEG photo files at any time. I have personally tested this software numerous times before deciding to write about it here on my blog. While there may be a chance that "corrupted data" on a memory card may be UN-recoverable from time to time, overall  I am comfortable recommending this product to my readers and clients as a great solution to getting back lost photos and other types of deleted file formats.

Hope that this article was helpful to you!

By the way, I think that it's really cool that it is almost impossible to "lose" digital files these days, particularly as it pertains to my role as a professional wedding photographer! This kind of technology ensures that my client's precious photos are almost always recoverable even if the unexpected happens!

:)

-Sally