How to Recover Deleted Photos for Free

We've all been there. Maybe you thought you had a different card in before you deleted your photos, or maybe you thought you didn't need them anymore. Whatever the reason, all those pictures you worked so hard on are gone.

Michael Zhang at PetaPixel had a similar experience. "Last night my pastor emailed me telling me that he had accidentally deleted an entire folder of photographs off his Sony compact camera," he writes. Sony offers a recovery program, but it costs $200 - $300 and that's a lot more that most people can shell out.

Zhang searched for and eventually found a free alternative in a program called PhotoRec. It's not exactly the simplest program to use - I wouldn't recommend it so someone that's tech illiterate - but it's effective. You can find the tutorial over at PetaPixel, but step one is the most important of all. Stop using the card, or you're likely to lose those photos for good.