Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery

Source

Our flagship product ZAR 8.3 now includes the (freely available) mode to recover digital images. Generally, program should work with any media type (e.g. CompactFlash, MemoryStick, SmartMedia and so on) accessible by means of operating system. You need the use your camera or the appropriate card reader you normally use to transfer images from camera to PC.

Standalone Digital Image Recovery tool has been discontinued 30 December 2005. Scroll down for reasons as to why.

Current version (ZAR 8.3) supports digital photo recovery for the following file formats:

• GIF
• JPEG 
• TIFF
• CRW - Canon RAW data
• MOV, AVI movie
• WAV - Waveform audio
• CR2 - Canon CR2 RAW format (see notes below).
• ORF - Olympus RAW format

For a list of compatible camera models please check Zero Assumption Digital Image Recovery system requirements.

The following information is available regarding Canon .CR2 raw format, thanks to Jeff of Jeff Berner Photography and Art:

ZA Digital Image Recovery recovers Canon .CR2 files as TIFF. To open recovered files, Jeff used Photoshop CS "Open With" feature, which allows to specify image format override.

General usage instructions

1. Download, install, then run ZAR 8.3 (click here for zar83setup.exe).
2. Attach the camera or insert the memory card into the reader device.
3. On the first screen, no adjustment is required, just hit "Next>>".
4. Program will then prompt you for an operation mode. Select "Recover images from camera memory card", then hit "Next>>".
5. Select your camera from the list of the attached devices. You can identify the camera by its media size or by the model name (if available).
6. The rest is mostly automatic. When the analysis is done, select files to recover, specify the directory to place recovered files to, hit "Start copying" and you're done.

For a flash demo of a digital photo recovery, click here

Why did you discontinue the standalone tool?
This serves as the platform for future image recovery function enhancement. We decided that it would be much easier to implement some heavyweight image recovery algorithms this way.

Original Digital Image Recovery was freeware, but ZAR 8.3 seems not?
The digital picture recovery functions are implemented in the trial version of ZAR 8.3 in full. Hence you just need to download the evaluation version of ZAR 8.3 and it does the job at no charge. So, picture recovery functions are actually freeware. There are no plans to charge for it.