Recover corrupted RAW (DNG) Image - PSP Pro X4

[jostafew]

Hello everyone, I was working with a RAW photo and attempting output to JPEG when it seems that the original RAW image was corrupted somehow. It seems that the original image data is still there as I can open the original RAW file in Windows Picture viewer etc. but if I try to open it in PSP X4 it shows up as a grey box with an X and I get a dialogue saying "The specified file cannot be identified as a supported file type". If I try to open in my camera's software; Pentax Camera Utility (Silkypix) again it shows up as a broken image. Any ideas how to recover this file? It seems that somehow the metadata attached to that file is broken, if I could strip that away it would probably be fine.

Thanks in advance

[hartpaul]

You will probably have to work with a hex reade write program and using a second Raw file of similar type try and replace the section that has been corrupted.
Do what you should have done originally and make a copy first and work in the copy.
I am rather paranoid about these things and follow a regular procedure:
Original files from Camera --> Folder A (Do not remove the images from your card until you have them properly backed up)
Folder A - files renamed and numbered according to my system.
Folder A copied to Folder B (archive folder) ( I now have three copies - On cards, and 2 different folders on different hard drives. -- I can now delete the images on te card.)
I do not touch Folder B again except to recover an image if it gets stuffed up in all iterations.

Folder A I now rotate all the jpg files to proper orientation ( Ishoot Raw + Jpg and if my exposures and colour done properly I do not need to use the Raw files) and drag bad images into a separate OUTTAKES folder inside A. Renumber those remaining.
Folder A now copied to two other hard drives as Folder C and Folder D which are stored in different areas. So now I have 4 copies of all files. B archive closest to shots from camera, C and D rotated first edit and renamed.
Now I can operate on the Folder A. adjusting images but even here to save me having to reaccess the drives for B C or D I will copy any files I want to work on from the A folder into a Working or TEMP folder on the same drive as the A folder. Should I stuff any of the files in my working folder then a copy is only a folder away.
When I have finished working with any / most all files from the A folder then it can be deleted from my main drive. Should I wish to revisit at a much later date then I can get another copy from the C or D drive.

Good backup procedures will prevent these problems from occurring again.

[jostafew]

Thank you for sharing your workflow routine. I work in IT so I too understand the importance of good backup strategies. As you mentioned I do not delete from memory card on the camera until the files have been safely transferred to PC and confirmed OK. I also keep regular backups of work, but in this case I hadn't run backups yet of this batch. I thought I was OK because as I understood it PSP does not make changes to RAW files so I thought barring a major HDD failure my original RAW shots would be OK until regular backup was run. I see that's not the case, lesson learned the hard way. Fortunatly I'm not at the professional level yet where someone has paid me and is expecting results; I may have just lost one of the family's group photo shots (have another 3 good shots from that scene to work with) so not the end of the world if I can't recover that particular shot.

I'll do a little digging into your suggestion about replacing that damaged section in hex, thanks for the advice.

[jostafew]

Ok, made some progress in getting that image back; using PhotoMe (free-ware) I was able to open the trouble file and save it out to a proper JPEG so I can carry on where I left off. PhotoMe is designed as a tool for editing metadata on RAW files so it had no trouble opening my file. It looks as if the changes I made in PSP were still in place when opened in PhotoMe as highlight recovery was still in place along with the cropping that I'd done. I've given up on correcting that RAW file for work with PSP as I was able to get to my end goal, but maybe I'll go back and take another crack at it when I get bored.

[kevinbadpit]

Hi

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[glcayg]

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Regards
Glacy