Can these old pictures be recovered? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 01:26:32 pm
content: I have some old pictures from 2016 that are corrupted and i would very much like to recover them. But can they be recovered?When i check the properties tab they show up as ~1.5meg in size and show the correct date so they're not completely gone but the images themselves are pretty messed up.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 01:30:07 pm
content: File type and upon what file system?

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 01:47:00 pm
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on January 24, 2021, 01:30:07 pmThese are .jpeg and they came from an SD card from my old phone (Z1 compact).Oddly enough all the other pictures are fine but the ones i need are corrupted.

author: Syntax Error
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 02:48:59 pm
content: I would need to see an original file to ascertain where or how the data is damaged. A corrupted jpeg looks like random set of colored blocks followed by black or no image. What are these, images of the moon or theinside of a pocket? It's possible that just a tiny fragment of the image is being stretched out into the frame to give this cloudy texture. But without an orginal, I could not say if they can be reclaimed.

author: richard.cs
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 03:01:56 pm
content: Quote from: Syntax Error on January 24, 2021, 02:48:59 pmI was expecting blocks, but I guess that's a plausible mechanism to get this cloudy image.Some JPEG decoders cope better than others with bad files, it's worth trying a few and seeing if you get any different results.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 03:16:41 pm
content: Quote from: Syntax Error on January 24, 2021, 02:48:59 pmThe pictures were supposed to be from when i was rebuilding the engine in my car, i need to see if they contain the engine registration number.But when i checked the dates with one picture from when i was just pulling the car into the garage before the rebuild it's from 2017 so i actually don't know what's in these jpegs.So i guess it could very well be that they're supposed to look like this?But why would there be a whopping 91 of these.Anyways, it looks like the pictures i'm looking for might be in my old phone, which got smashed during the rebuild.That's what i get for keeping my phone in my pocket when fumbling the engine back into the engine bay.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 03:19:04 pm
content: Quote from: richard.cs on January 24, 2021, 03:01:56 pmThe Samsung Galaxy standard camera app used to have a nasty problem with the jpg encoder only when shooting in panorama. Reading them back on desktop Linux was a no go. Somebody made a python script to reorder the tags in the file, but I never could establish if the phone software was simply following a standard or if the generic open source jpeg reader was broken. The problem disappeared after an update and a wait of about 3 years.Not saying this is the OP's problem but I wonder if there may have been a setting on the camera during the time of those affected files. Are the file sizes unusual?https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46802866/how-to-detect-if-the-jpg-jpeg-image-file-is-corruptedincompleteThere's a bit of info on what to look for if you wanna get your hands dirty.

author: Twoflower
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 03:39:00 pm
content: To me they look like the lens was covered by a finger. Even the vignetting from the optical system in the corners is visible. So I don't think there's something wrong with the file data in itself. Corrupting data to reassemble such images but not creating a single JPEG glitch would be extremely unlikely (as of close to impossible unlikely).Errors in JPEGs more look like that:https://snorpey.github.io/jpg-glitch/(To my understanding if you set "Iterations" to 1 a single byte will changed to the value "Amount" at a random position, based on "Seed"). Depending on the position the error is not visible or only changes the brightness. Others get easily visible.Edit:You should check the embedded Thumbnails. For example usingjheadto extract the image:Code:cd <to your images>jhead -st "thumbnail.jpg" DSC_0550.jpgThis extracts the embedded thumbnail into a file you can open with any image viewer.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 03:57:59 pm
content: Quote from: Twoflower on January 24, 2021, 03:39:00 pmI think you're right. I assumed these were the pics i wanted because the pics from before the rebuild and right after were present and these were the only ones i couldn't explain, so i assumed these were the missing pics of the rebuild that were corrupted somehow.But things don't add up once i check the dates, so be it bigfoot, UFO, or just my hand on the camera, these are not the pictures i'm looking for

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2021, 04:02:08 pm
content: I have heaps of photos of my feet.