After you accidentally deleted photos and emptied the Recycle Bin, or you deleted photos directly from an external storage device on a PC, all deleted pictures skipped the Recycle Bin and became lost. In these situations, you can use reliable and powerful photo recovery software to retrieve your lost pictures quickly. 

After testing over a dozen of photo recovery software for PC, we provide a narrower list of the best photo recovery software for you. They can help you recover your deleted or lost pictures on a memory card, hard drive, or flash drive. They contain free photo recovery tools such as Recuva and PhotoRec, budget-friendly iTop Data Recovery and Stellar Photo Recovery, and premium alternatives such as Disk Drill and EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.

1. iTop Data Recovery

2. Stellar Photo Recovery

3. PhotoRec

4. Recuva

5. Disk Drill

6. EaseUS

After pictures, photos, or images are deleted or even formatted from the computer or external disks their contents are not immediately erased until they are overwritten by new data. The directories of the deleted photos become inaccessible and the file entries are not displayed in the file management utility. The space of the deleted photos is marked as available for storing new data. Therefore, you should stop using the computer or the external storage medium as soon as any data loss is suspected.

A photo recovery tool can scan the disk and find the contents of the deleted images that remain after user deletion. Then it helps reconstruct the original directories and display the images within the software. The photo recovery software gives you the option of restoring them to another location.

Image recovery software can help recover lost files in the situations as follows:

• Accidental deletion

• Disk corruption

• Drive formatting

• Partition loss

• System crash

• Virus infection

The chances of successful photo recovery depend largely on the capabilities of photo recovery apps. You should select a photo recovery program with advanced algorithms that can find lost pictures as much as possible and support recovering a wide range of image types. Read below to know the 6 top-rated photo recovery software.

1. iTop Data Recovery

iTop Data Recovery software is one of the best picture restoration apps for Windows. It recovers photos, videos, audio, and documents from most external devices. Lost photo recovery from inaccessible, formatted, or corrupted SD cards, flash drives, or hard drives is fast and easy.

       

3,000,000+ Downloads
from 100+ countries & regions

Key Features of iTop Data Recovery

• Recover 1000+ file types like images, music, documents, video, etc
• Get back deleted & lost files from different storage devices
• Provides instant data recovery for any emergency data lost reasons
• Free preview files before recovery.

Free Download

For Windows 11/10/8/7

Pros:

• Allow selecting a specific folder, partition, or file type for recovery

• Support the incredible number of file formats (1000+)

• Attractively priced

Cons:

• Windows only

"iTop Data Recovery is your ideal choice for recovering emptied Recycle Bin, retrieving lost data from malware or viruses, and recovering data from system crashes, hard drive formatting or other errant operations that result in data loss." - CNET.com

How to Use iTop Data Recovery to Get Important Pictures Back

It is very easy and effective to use iTop Data Recovery to get back lost photos and images:

Step 1: Free download the photo recovery software for Windows 10 or other Windows versions on your PC. Follow the onscreen wizard to finish the installation.

Step 2: Choose the location. iTop photo recovery software for PC supports memory cards, SSDs, HDDs, USB flash drives, and PCs.

Step 3: Tick the checkbox of Photos and click the Scan button. The software supports scanning and recovering various image types including JPG/JPEG, TIFF/TIF, PNG, BMP, GIF, PSD, CRW, CR2, MRW, DCR, and WMF, RAW, SVG, RAF, DNG, and many more. 

Step 4: Select All Types and then Photos to see all found graphics. You can preview the pictures you want to restore.

Step 5: Select wanted photos and click Recover to save them to a different folder.

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2. Stellar Photo Recovery

Stellar Photo Recovery is an all-in-one professional photo retrieval software that can recover deleted photos, videos, and audio from computers, cameras, and removable media. It is equipped with a few powerful photo recovery tools such as Resume Recovery, Disk Image, and Volume Image and these features help you recover images faster and more securely.

Pros:

• Allows users to select a specific file type or folder for recovery

• Support RAW photo recovery

• Support Deleted iPhone/iPad photos and videos

Cons:

• Limited file format support (70+)

• No free data recovery

"Stellar Data Recovery(opens in new tab) enables users to retrieve deleted, lost, and unavailable objects from a hard drive, USB stick, or almost any other storage device. What’s more, it’s very popular and comes with a suite of high-end tools." - TechRadar.com

3. PhotoRec (H3)

PhotoRec, as its name suggests, is a free and open-source photo recovery software designed to recover lost videos, documents, pictures, etc. It has outstanding compatibility and it works on multiple operating systems including DOS, Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD-based OS, and Sun Solaris.

Pros:

• Completely free

• Support multiple languages, file systems, and platforms

Cons:

• Text-based interface

• No technical support

"Generally the PhotoRec software searches all known file extensions. PhotoRec can recover the whole file in most cases where there is no fragmentation of data. PhotoRec can recover file formats of more than 390 file extensions belonging to 225 file families. Some of the file formats the PhotoRec easily recovers are graphics file formats, JPEG, HTML, PDF, Office, ZIP, etc. " - Techulator.com

4. Recuva

Recuva is another free photo recovery software for PC by Piriform Software. It supports recovering a wide range of file types from any rewritable storage media including pictures, documents, music, archives, and emails. 

Pros:

• Free unlimited photo recovery

• Easy to use

Cons:

• Windows only

• No official support

• Outdated user interface

"We like Recuva for its low cost, its clear interface, and its ease of use, but it only recovered two-thirds of the deleted files on my test drive, and that kind of performance may not be good enough in a crisis. Still, it can't hurt to download the free version and give it a try. " - PCMag.com

5. Disk Drill

Disk Drill is one of the most popular file recovery solutions. Users can get lost data and pictures back with its advanced disk scanning capabilities. Disk Drill also provides a wide variety of disk tools to help monitor the disk health, clean up disk, and back up files.

Pros:

• Extra data protection and backup features

• Modern and clear user interface

• Support multiple platforms including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Cons:

• Limited free data recovery (500 MB)

• Paid versions are expensive

"Disk Drill has a reputation as one of the best data recovery programs on the market, and this is well deserved. It supports the recovery of lost and accidentally deleted files and data from Windows and Mac devices, and its deep scans are extremely effective. " - ITProPortal.com

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6. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is a comprehensive data recovery tool for Windows and macOS. It can be used to scan PCs, Macs, and external storage devices for deleted or lost photos. 

Pros:

• User-friendly interface

• Multiple picture filter and search features for fast recovery

• Photo preview before recovery

Cons:

• Limited free data recovery (1 GB)

"EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is a free file recovery program for both Windows and Mac operating systems. It recovers data from internal and external hard drives, as well as USB devices, memory cards, iOS devices, music players, and similar devices." - LifeWire.com

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1. How do I recover photos from my computer?

You can recover deleted photos from your computer by following the steps below:

Step 1: Connect your external disk that contains the file backups to your computer.

Step 2: Open File History by going to Control Panel > System and Security.

Step 3: Open the folder from where photos were deleted.

Step 4: Select the deleted photos you want to restore and click the Restore button.

2. Which is the best photo recovery software?

10 best photo recovery apps:

• iTop Data Recovery

• Stellar Data Recovery

• Recuva

• PhotoRec

• Disk Drill

• EaseUS

• iBoysoft Data Recovery

• Wondershare Recoverit

• Windows File Recovery

• DiskDigger

3. How can I recover deleted photos for free?

You can undelete your photos for free if they are not emptied from the Recycle Bin. Right-click the photos in the Recycle Bin and select Restore. Deleted images will be restored to their original folders.

You May Like: 4 Quick Steps to Recover Recycle Bin Deleted Files After Empty >>

4. How to recover permanently deleted pictures on a PC?

Using a reliable image picture recovery software for PC is the best way to recover permanently deleted pictures. Free download iTop Data Recovery and use it to scan your PC for lost pictures. Then select the pictures and recover them to an external hard disk.

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For Windows 11/10/8/7