Over time, this software pick has morphed into a repository for photo management apps for the Mac. I'll continue to add photo-related apps to this collection, which will take it well past the 5 Photo Management Apps seen in the original title. Top 10 Best Photo Management Software Reviews 2018 Posted by Winnie to Photo Management| Last Updated on Dec.13, 2017. Here is a complete list of 2018 best 8 photo management software for Mac or Windows, which makes photo organization and management easily, namely sorting photos, editing pictures, and backing up photos without a hassle. Among the features in the latest update to Mac OS X is a photo-management software, simply called Photos, replacing iPhoto and Aperture. Magix Photo Manager comes with a slew of handy features for worry free management of your photos. It has a nice stable user interface and comes with a import feature using which you can right away get your photos and videos from your digital camera, phone, or scanner. Affinity Photo has long been a top seller on the Mac App Store (although you can also buy direct from Serif), as it provides a really powerful selection of photo-editing tools for just under £50/$50. There aren't many Mac photo management apps that aren't geared towards a specific purpose, but among the few we think Lyn is the best for it's speed, wide format compatibility, and good.

I’ve always been a huge fan of cloud-managed photo systems. I did a review of Everpix back in 2013. I even challenged Apple to release something similar to iCloud Photo Library. I’ve written countless articles about Photo Management and discussed it on countless podcasts. Photo management is something I care deeply about.

While I have all my photos and videos in iCloud Photo Library (the 2TB plan), I also still use Google Photos as well. You might wonder why? While I’m firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem from a hardware and software perspective, I always like to be flexible.

By keeping a dual copy of my photos in both system, I can easily swap to a Chromebook or Android device without missing a beat. Anytime I make an album in iCloud Photo Library; I always create the same album in Google Photos. Doing this allows me to stay up to date on the strengths and weaknesses of both.

iCloud Photo Library

Strengths

If you are using a macOS and iOS device, iCloud Photo Library has a very distinct advantage: it’s a native service. Your camera roll is hooked right into iCloud Photo Library. If you go to post a photo to an app like Instagram, all of your photos are there. If you want to use a third party editing tool, you can give it access to your entire library. Any edits you make are automatically synced everywhere.

Photos on the Mac is light years ahead of Google’s web interface for managing photos on the desktop. I can make custom albums based on EXIF data and easily export photos out (drag and drop) if I needed to. Since my Mac has a 1 TB drive, I also keep an offline copy of my library. Doing this allows Time Machine and Backblaze to keep additional backups for me. Despite the advancements in web technology, I still prefer native apps for photo management.

Apple also has the advantage when it comes to privacy. Apple doesn’t sync all of the faces metadata across iCloud. While the names of the people you have stored in Faces for are synced, each device does its face scanning on the device. While this makes a new device a little harder to setup, there is an aspect of Apple’s approach I appreciate.

Weaknesses

Apple has two key weaknesses with iCloud Photo Library.

The first is pricing. Apple only offers 5 GB for free of storage, so most people will have to pay to store their photos. I understand that Google can offer a free plan due to advertising revenue, but if Apple is as concerned with privacy as they claim, they should offer at least 50 GB of free storage, so users don’t use Google Photos.

The second key weakness is the lack of a family setup for iCloud Photo Library. I know they offered shared albums, but families don’t have a way to share a single library. As a parent of young children, I have tons of photos. Some of them are taken by me and others taken by my wife. The fact that there isn’t an automatic way to share them back and forth creates difficult workflows. You can AirDrop them back and forth, but that gets old after a while. My current solution is that I have my wife’s camera roll set to upload to Dropbox whenever she gets on Wi-Fi, and then I import them into Photos on the Mac (after I cull bad ones). They then sync to my iPhone, and then Google Photos uploads them.

Here is how I think Apple could make it work: Let me designate read and copy of my camera roll to my family. Users could save anything from a family member’s library to their own. People could still create their own albums, but they could also view the libraries of family members (albums, faces, etc). With this option, I could choose the best photos my wife takes and save them to my library.

Google Photos

Strengths

If you compare Google to iCloud with photo management, their strengths and weaknesses mirror each other. Where Apple has a weakness from a pricing perspective, that is a strength for Google. They do offer a paid plan, but their free plan will be good enough for most people. On the free plan, photos are slightly compressed.

• If a photo is larger than 16MP, it will be resized to 16MP.
• Videos higher than 1080p will be resized to high-definition 1080p. A video with 1080p or less will look close to the original.

While I do prefer to have the original copies, a video taken at 4K compressed down to 1080p is better than no copy at all (if your hard drive crashed, etc).

For people who don’t want to pay anything, Google Photos is better than no system at all. If you have a relative or a friend that doesn’t want to pay for iCloud, install Google Photos for them. They can at least have some sort of online backup.

Another strength of Google Photos is they have a way to share your entire library with someone. You can share your entire library, photos of only certain people, or photos from a certain date forward. This is done from Google account to Google account. Even if you don’t want to go through that hassle, you can simply sign into your Google account on a spouse’s phone.

Weaknesses

One of Google’s most significant weaknesses is the lack of a native app on the desktop. The web interface works well, but it doesn’t hold up for editing and organization compared to a desktop app. The web interface feels like a blown up mobile website.

The other big weakness for Google Photos is the privacy problem. Some people are concerned about uploading their entire photo library to a company who makes money on advertising. Google’s goal is to certainly learn more about you to better target ads, but it’s not like employees at Google can browse your entire library at will. Nevertheless, the perception does persist for some people.

Which is the best?

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is Apple’s Memories section vs Google’s Assistant section. Both are really good, but are doing different things. I do love how the Memories section is available on Apple TV, but Google Photos makes some really great animations. This section is really a toss up for me.

If you are firmly living in the Apple ecosystem, it’s hard to ignore Apple’s advantages with Photos. It’s private, native, and works extremely well. I hope they come up with a solution for family sharing and offer more free space in the future, but even without those, I still prefer it. If you don’t want to pay or want a cross-platform solution, Google Photos is still a fantastic choice. If you can’t decide, use both. Pay for iCloud, but then let Google Photo’s free plan backup your photos as well. It’s also nice to another have another backup!

What do you think about these apps? Let me know in the comments? Does Apple need to release a family solution for iOS 12?

So you just learned that photo recovery software may be able to recover your deleted or lost pictures? Whether you accidentally deleted these photos from camera memory card, or they became inaccessible because the card or hard drive had corrupted. Worse yet, you don’t have a backup.

Anyway, you now need to retrieve your lost “digital memories”, desperately. I felt you. This year 2019 alone, I’ve had two friends coming to me because some pictures got accidentally erased from their digital camera. Fortunately, I used Recuva and the program helped restore some of the photos.

Not all digital photo recovery software is created equal. In our experience, some are good at recovering deleted pictures, some are good at rescuing more images from a crashed storage media. Some took less time to scan the drive, while others can take you hours to finish a scan.

We tested 20+ dedicated photo recovery software on our PC and Mac (yes, you need a computer to run those programs), and handpicked a list of the best ones that stand out.

Read on to find out.

Please note: the software selected below are mainly designed for recovering photos, videos from digital cameras, memory cards, etc. You may also want to read our best data recovery software review for Windows and Mac. If you want to recover photos from a mobile device, check out our recovery software reviews for iPhones, iPads, or Android devices.

Quick Summary

Don’t have time to read this entire review? No problem! Below is a recap of our recommendations for the best photo recovery software.

Best FREE Photo Recovery Software:

• PhotoRec (Windows/Mac)
• Exif Untrasher (Mac Only)
• Recuva (Windows Only)

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Best Paid Photo Recovery Software:

• Stellar Photo Recovery ($39.99, Windows/Mac)
• Remo Media Recover ($49.95, Windows/Mac)
• CardRecovery Pro ($49.96, Windows Only)
• Picture Rescue ($49, Windows/Mac)
• RecoverIt Photo Recovery ($49.95, Windows/Mac)

Other Photo Recovery Software Worth Trying:

• Easy Digital Photo Recovery ($59, Windows Only)
• Recover My Photos ($39.95, Windows Only)
• Disk Doctors Photo Recovery ($49.97+, Windows Only)

Below, you’ll find our impartial reviews. You can also click the links above to get the image recovery software that fits you best and start recovering your lost pictures right away.

Best Photo Recovery Software: What to Consider?

We analyze from five different criteria, i.e. security, recovery ability, supported devices, ease of use, and system compatibility. We’ll also include detailed explanations on why they are important.

Security

All recommended software and apps on our site are virus-free, we do so by uploading downloadable files to Valkyrie — a sophisticated file verdict system built by Comodo to detect whether a program contains malware. We also evaluate whether the program is nondestructive, as software designed for photo recovery should perform read-only operations and shouldn’t cause any damage to the original storage media.

Recovery Capability

A powerful photo recovery software should be able to recover as many kinds of image formats as possible. Besides standard JPEG, PNG, we also see if the program supports camera RAW formats. Also somewhat surprisingly, most photo retrieval software available in the market claim they support recovering video and audio files as well.

Supported Devices

If a photo recovery software is unable to detect the storage devices e.g. SD card, hard drive, etc. where your lost photos used to be saved, then the software is useless. We did find several programs that are designed for restoring pictures from a PC hard drive only (NOT external media). In short, the best photo recovery software should support popular media storage devices.

Ease of Use

Software UI/UX is another important factor we consider. Some programs are poorly designed and even look alike, we knock them out because they are probably white-labeled products (except the brand name, everything else in the program looks extremely similar or exactly identical). Also, we have to admit that we prefer GUI software than command line tools. But we do include PhotoRec on our list because it’s free.

OS Compatibility

If a Windows photo recovery software is not compatible with the latest Windows 10, or a Mac photo recovery app can’t be run under macOS Mojave or Catalina, we have to think twice before including it on our recommended list.

The Best Photo Recovery Software in 2019: Our Picks

Note that all the software below have been tested by our team and we confirm that they are safe to download and use, some are free some require to pay (we’ll make it clear), some programs can only be run on Windows or macOS, while some support both. Software won’t succeed in every case, your luck may vary 🙂

1. PhotoRec (Windows/Mac/Linux)

Don’t be fooled by its name, PhotoRec not only retrieves photos and media files, but it also can recover numerous file formats including ZIP, Office, PDF, HTML and many more (full tech specific is here). It’s free to download and use on Windows, macOS, and Linux. However, the learning curve for handling the program might hold many people away as it’s a command line tool (above is its main interface). So, the photo recovery program is best for computer people who are comfortable running on DOS environment. However, if you are willing to spend a bit of time following this official tutorial, chances are you will learn how to use it and maybe recover your lost pictures.

2. Stellar Photo Recovery (Windows/Mac)

Boasted it as one of the oldest data recovery service providers (since 1993), Stellar Phoenix, now simply called Stellar, provides a photo recovery software that’s capable of recovering images, videos, and audio files. It supports both general image file formats as well as camera raws. Best of all, the preview ability of Stellar Photo Recovery makes the program stand out, as it even allows you to preview audio sounds before they are recovered — which is a huge time saver. Stellar Photo Recovery comes with both Windows and Macintosh version, so you can run the software on a PC or Mac.

3. Recuva (Windows Only)

Recuva is a free undelete program developed by Piriform, later acquired by Avast back in 2017. The small utility got its word of mouth as it’s super simple to use thanks to the step-by-step guide as shown on the main interface. Plus, it’s free! Note though, the new maker added a new pricing structure which tries to persuade you to pay but frankly the value of the Pro versions are limited and we don’t recommend you purchase them unless you really need premium support. Currently, Recuva is for Windows only. Those claim Recuva for Mac is false and misleading.

4. Remo Media Recover (Windows/Mac)

Like its name indicates this photo recovery software is specifically designed to recover media items. Remo claims it’s able to identify and restore up to 50 popular media file types from memory cards, iPods, hard drives and SSDs. It can restore RAW images from almost all popular DSLRs & camcorder brands. Their official site offers a lot of useful step-by-step tutorials and troubleshooting guides. If you come across any technical issues during your photo recovery process, those resources are worth taking a look.

5. Exif Untrasher (Mac Only)

There are many free data recovery software out there, few are for Mac users. Exif Untrasher is one of the few apps out there. Developed by a German software engineer who accidentally formatted his camera’s memory card and deleted images erro­ne­ous­ly, and he was using a Mac machine! The utility is able to scan your memory card or external drive for photos in JPEG format and try to recover them. Note: after you install the app on your Mac. The correct way to open and run it is: go to Finder > Applications, locate Exif Untrasher app, right click and select “Open”.

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6. CardRecoveryPro (Windows Only)

CardRecoveryPro, originally designed to retrieve memory cards for lost photos, now also supports recovery of lost photos from a computer’s hard disk drive or solid-state drive. Once you install the program on your computer, click “Start Scan”, select which drive you want to recover the files from, define your camera brand, and confirm the destination folder you’d like to save the found files, then the program is good to go. Note: the program is NOT for Mac users.

7. Picture Rescue (Mac/Windows)

Made by Prosoft Engineering (a prestigious data software company based in California), Picture Rescue 2 is another powerful photo recovery software that can be used on either a PC or Mac. This program is specifically made to recover media files from external storage devices like digital camera media cards and flash disks, which means you can NOT use it to recover lost photos from your computer hard drive. When inserting your SD card, open Picture Rescue, the name of your SD card will pop up on the main interface of the software. Getting started, you just need to select the location you want to recover and click the “Scan” button.

8. RecoverIt Photo Recovery (Windows/Mac)

If you need to recover photos from several different types of devices, check out RecoverIt Photo Recovery — a well-developed program that may get your photos back from accidental deletion, system crash or the other photo loss situations. Just install the software on your PC or Mac and open it, select the location you want to recover files from. Then click the “Recover” button, RecoverIt will show you the scanning time it needs to complete. While it’s very intuitive, we did find one issue with the program: it’s very resource-huggy while scanning for a drive, the fan of our PC ran out loud and the computer heated up very quickly.

9. Easy Digital Photo Recovery (Windows Only)

Easy Digital Photo Recovery is a simple image recovery tool that works amazingly well to recover many types of graphic images (from JPEG, TIFF to many RAW formats). What we like most about the software is that it scans quickly and allows you to preview all found images making it a lot easier to locate your wanted files. The program incorporates multiple languages on the Interface including English, French, Spanish, German, etc. Though the developer’s website has yet to update compatibility information about Windows 10, we tested it on our Windows 10 based PC and it worked perfectly well.

10. Recover My Photos (Windows Only)

If you want to use this simple-to-use photo recovery software, you have to check your Windows version because there are two different Windows version for you to download – Windows 32-bit and Windows 64 bit. The terms 32-bit and 64-bit refer to the way a computer’s processor handles information. The 64-bit version of Windows handles large amounts of random access memory (RAM) more effectively than a 32-bit system. Tips: If you can’t confirm the right version of your Windows, download the 32-bit system because Recover My Photos 32-bit version will still work for the Windows 64-bit though you may lose some processing efficiency. In a word, Recover My Photos is still one of the best recovery software in the market. You may get all your lost photos back than you expected.

>> Get Recover My Photos ($39.95) <<

11. Disk Doctors Photo Recovery (Windows/Mac)

If you have tried all the above photo recovery software and you still can not get your photos back, Disk Doctors Photo Recovery may be your last chance. This software might be more friendly to earlier Windows versions e.g. Windows XP or Windows 7, but by no means Windows 10. When we installed the program on our PC (with the latest Windows 10), we found the instruction texts as shown on its interface are too small to read. However, the software still worked to scan after some simple settings and it did find some photos afterwards.

>> Get Disk Doctors Photo Recovery (Windows $49.97, Mac $69.97) <<

12. Odboso Photo Retrieval (Windows Only)

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PhotoRetrieval is another photo recovery software worth trying. It’s developed to recover deleted photos (and videos & audio) from both computer hard drives and portable storage devices. No matter you lose files due to accidental deletion, disk re-formatting, hardware malfunction, Odboso claims it has no problem handling these situations. Supported media file formats include: common picture (JPG/JPEG, PNG, TIFF), camera RAW image (Canon CR2/CRW, Nikon NEF, Fuji RAF, Pentax PEF, Olympus ORF), and multimedia (3GP, AVI, M4V, MOV, MP4).

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Influenced by the startup culture in the Silicon Valley, Jessica loves building things from zero to one and is keen on following news related to the Big Five tech giants and many SaaS startups.