Repairing a grey or shifted photo: your options compared

A recovered photo that is fine at the top and then grey, shifted sideways or in the wrong colours can often be saved. There are several ways to try. Here is what each kind of tool can do for this damage, and what to check before you pay for one.

What this damage needs

In a photo like this, a small part of the file is missing, and everything after it is read in the wrong place. Making the file open again isn't enough. A real repair has to:

• put every piece after a gap back where it belongs, so the picture lines up again;
• give every piece its right colours, because each gap also shifts the colours of everything after it;
• fill only what was really lost, and keep the rest of the picture as the camera took it.

Photo repair programs

Programs such as Stellar Repair for Photo and Wondershare Repairit are installed on your computer (Repairit also has an online version). Their makers say they repair greyed-out and pixelated photos, and for badly damaged JPEGs both can use a sample file: an intact photo taken with the same camera. They also fix other problems, such as files whose header is damaged. They are sold as licences or subscriptions.

Before you buy, try the free version on one of your own broken photos and look closely at the preview: does the lower part of the picture line up with the top again, or is it only grey filled in?

Expert tools

JPEG-Repair Toolkit, by the data recovery specialist Disktuna, lets you work on the file itself: find where data is missing, insert or remove data, and move the picture after it block by block and adjust its colours by hand. It can save photos that nothing automatic gets right, but it takes time and some practice for every photo. The same author also repairs photos by hand as a service, paid per photo.

A photo editor

In an editor you can paint over a grey area, or copy in a piece from another photo. But an editor only sees the picture as a viewer shows it: it can't move the shifted data back to where it belongs. And saving the file throws away the part of the data that a real repair needs. If you want to try, work on a copy.

memories.repair

You upload the photo in your browser, nothing to install. The repair is automatic: it finds what was lost, puts every piece back in place, using the small preview the camera stores inside every photo where there is one, and corrects the colours. A viewer shows you the result, and you can nudge any piece that is still off and change its colours.

• Free: the diagnosis, the preview and the adjusting. You only pay to download the repaired photo: one credit, €0.50 a photo and less in bigger packs (prices).
• Your photo is yours: used only for the repair, deleted after 7 days, never used to train AI.
• What it can't do: bring back what was lost (that part is filled in and looks blurry), repair files that were written over, or repair HEIC, RAW, PNG or progressive JPEG files.

Before you pay for any of them

• Can you see the repaired photo first? The damage differs from photo to photo; a demo on someone else's picture says little about yours.
• Does the picture line up again, or does the tool only fill the grey part?
• Can you correct a piece it got wrong, or only take the result as it is?
• Does it keep your original file untouched? Always work on copies anyway.
• Where do your photos go? An installed program keeps them on your computer; an online one should say how long it keeps them and what it uses them for.