The 5 Best Photo Recovery Software for Windows and Mac [2025 Guide]

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In this article, you will review the features, pros, cons, compatibility, and price of the five best photo recovery software tools to choose the right utility.

Most of our personal or professional data is stored in photos, which we frequently use to capture the beautiful moments of our lives. Unfortunately, photos are prone to corruption, formatting, and deletion, and no one wants to ever experience losing important photos.

Interestingly, photo loss is no longer a big issue, as today’s market offers several data recovery tools. These utilities help you restore your lost photos, videos, documents, emails, and other types of data. However, choosing a reliable tool often becomes tricky. This guide presents the 5 best highly reliable photo recovery software tools that protect your data.

Part 1. What to Consider While Choosing Good Photo Recovery Software?

Before getting into the specifics of various photo recovery tools, let’s first look at what you should keep in mind while selecting a dependable recovery utility.

Compatibility: A good tool must be compatible across platforms (Mac and Windows) to ensure easy accessibility.
Format Support: There should be support for standard (JPG and PNG) and raw photo formats (CR2, DNG, etc.).
Recovery Rate: The higher the success recovery rate, the more reliable the tool will be.
Quick & Deep Scan: Tools with quick and deep scan features can perform advanced photo recovery for precise restoration.
Preview Before Recovery: This feature helps you look at photos before you restore them.
User Reviews: Positive user reviews always indicate the real positive potential of good software.
Customer Support: It must be highly responsive and cooperative.
Cost: It shouldn’t be your primary consideration, but affordable tools with a good reputation are recommended.

Part 2. Top 5 Image Recovery Software for Windows & Mac

Are your photos lost for the very first time in your life? Want to get them back as soon as possible? Don’t panic. The tools below are considered among the best picture recovery software. Let’s look at what actually makes them stand out in today’s market.

1. Wondershare Recoverit

As the name suggests, this tool is purely designed for data recovery. It has all modern features to ensure quick, effective, and safe data recovery. Whether you want to recover photos, videos, audio files, documents, or anything else, Recoverit – Photo Recovery should be your number one choice.

Wondershare Recoverit is a leading consideration for millions of people around the world because of its superb recovery features, reliable recovery, and amazing customer support. Regardless of how you lost your pictures, this tool will help you restore them within minutes. However, the total recovery time depends on how much data you want to retrieve from the selected drive.

Features

It supports 2,000+ storage media devices, 1,000+ file types, and more than 500 recovery scenarios.
Recoverit can also retrieve photos from corrupted, damaged, or formatted hard drives.
This utility has a success recovery rate of 99.5% – one of the highest in the industry.
Preview before recovery is available.
It supports both raw and standard photo formats.

Steps to Recover Photos with Recoverit

It is a simple, 3-step process.

Step 1: Install Recoverit, launch it, and select the drive where you lost the photo files. Then, click Scan.

Step 2: Let the tool complete the scan. To quickly find lost pictures, filter files by selecting picture formats (e.g., PNG, JPG) from the left pane.

Step 3: Once you find the files you need, double-click the file will enable you to preview the result. If you have no problem with it, click Recover to download and save the files locally.

Pros

Compatible with Windows and Mac
Ensures virus-free and 100% secure photo recovery
Responsive customer support and a deep scan algorithm

Cons

Limited functionalities are included in the free trial.

Compatibility: Windows, Mac, NAS, and Linux

2. R-Studio

Since it is a professional-grade photo recovery tool, IT professionals and tech users commonly use it. Whether your photos are formatted, accidentally deleted, or lost due to any other reason, R-Studio can help you restore them from various storage devices.

Features

The deep scan feature can find lost photos from corrupted or formatted drives.
With this tool, you can easily recover photos in professional or raw formats, e.g., ARW and CR2.
It has advanced file system support.
A photo preview before recovery is available.

People Like It For

It is compatible across platforms.
Ability to perform complex recovery tasks.
It is trusted in professional photo recovery settings.

People Dislike It For

The user interface is complex.
It has a slower learning curve.

Compatibility: Linux, Mac, and Windows

Price: Starting from $79.99

3. Recuva

This freemium tool is also listed among the best picture recovery software. Piriform specifically developed this utility to assist users in restoring deleted or lost data, including images, from different storage devices. It is more popular among Windows users.

Features

The user interface is beginner-friendly.
Availability of deep scan and preview before recovery functionalities.
It can run directly on a USB drive.
It offers wide support for photo formats.

People Like It For

You can use it for free.
Easy to use for beginners
Quick, efficient photo recovery
It can restore photos from multiple devices.

People Dislike It For

It is available for Windows only.
It is not very effective for recovering pictures from severely damaged drives.

Compatibility: Windows

Price: $29.95 for up to 3 computers

4. DataRescue

With this data recovery software, you can easily recover formatted, deleted, or lost photos from SD cards, SSDs, hard drives, USB drives, and other storage devices. Though it is compatible across devices, Mac users frequently use it for image recovery.

Features

It lets you recover photos from reformatted, corrupted, or healthy drives.
File preview before recovery is available.
You can restore photos from Time Machine backups.
Cross-platform support and clone drive feature.

People Like It For

Wide photo format support
Upgraded recovery engine
You can run it on a separate drive to avoid overwriting

People Dislike It For

The free version does not allow you to recover photos.
Scanning may take a long time to complete.

Compatibility: Windows and Mac

Price: $0 (free trial), $79 (standard), and $399 (professional).

5. Puran File Recovery

This utility is designed to perform a free photo recovery on Windows OS. You can restore lost pictures from a variety of devices. It is best known for its practical and lightweight photo recovery.

Features

It supports photo recovery from damaged or formatted drives.
Puran File Recovery enables you to preview recoverable photos.
The file type filter makes recovery faster.
This tool can run perfectly from a USB drive.

People Like It For

It is 100% free to use.
Simple yet elegant user interface
Quick photo recovery
Wide format support

People Dislike It For

It may not help you recover professional (raw) photo formats.
Severely corrupted photos may not be recovered with this utility.

Compatibility: Windows

Price: Free to use.

Part 3. Actionable Tips to Maximize Your Photo Recovery Success

The following tips may help increase the chances of recovering photos.

Stop using the drive immediately from where your photos were lost.
Create regular backups on an external drive.
Avoid overwriting data at any cost.
Use a reliable photo recovery tool like Recoverit as soon as possible.
Never forget to preview pictures before recovery.

Final Words

Deleting or misplacing your photos can be frustrating. Thanks to modern photo recovery tools, it is no longer a challenge. Whether you’re a Mac or PC user, you can recover lost or deleted photos with various tools, such as Puran File Recovery, Recuva, R-Studio, and DataRescue. If you are more concerned about your data privacy, try Recoverit.

FAQs

Can I recover photos after emptying the Trash or Recycle Bin?

Yes, you can recover your lost pictures, even if your Recycle Bin or Trash is empty. As long as the data is not overwritten, you can recover photos anytime.

Do recovered photos lose their original quality?

No, recovered pictures don’t lose their original quality and resolution. However, it can only happen if the data is not overwritten.

How long does photo recovery take?

The recovery time largely depends on how many photos you want to restore. It also depends on whether you perform a quick or deep scan. Generally, the photo recovery can take between a few minutes and several hours.

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