iPhone Photo Restoration After Deletion
July 3, 2018 3:02 PM Subscribe
Is it possible to restore iPhone photos after they have been deleted and the Recently Deleted folder is cleared? Or can photos that are texted to someone but turned blurry when saved on their iPhone be cleaned up?
I have an iPhone; my wife has an iPhone. Over the weekend we went on a trip, and I took well over a hundred photos of her with my iPhone. Eventually, my iPhone ran out of room and could store no more pictures. When we returned home she requested that I text her the photos of her, which I did. I then had her confirm that she had received them, and after I received her confirmation I deleted the texts in which I sent them and the photos from my camera and then I cleared the Recently Deleted folder.
It now turns out that although the photos looked great when I texted them to her some of them saved blurry and unusable to her phone, including some that she feels were the best of the bunch. She is now mad at me for deleting them from my phone.
I checked the cloud, and there is nothing in it that I could see. I am less concerned whether or not it is fair that she is mad at me (my mind is pretty firmly made up regarding that one) than knowing that I am either going to need to fix this or just deal with her being mad. So is is possible for me to somehow restore these deleted photos? Or is it possible to somehow un-blur the photos that she had received? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
I have an iPhone; my wife has an iPhone. Over the weekend we went on a trip, and I took well over a hundred photos of her with my iPhone. Eventually, my iPhone ran out of room and could store no more pictures. When we returned home she requested that I text her the photos of her, which I did. I then had her confirm that she had received them, and after I received her confirmation I deleted the texts in which I sent them and the photos from my camera and then I cleared the Recently Deleted folder.
It now turns out that although the photos looked great when I texted them to her some of them saved blurry and unusable to her phone, including some that she feels were the best of the bunch. She is now mad at me for deleting them from my phone.
I checked the cloud, and there is nothing in it that I could see. I am less concerned whether or not it is fair that she is mad at me (my mind is pretty firmly made up regarding that one) than knowing that I am either going to need to fix this or just deal with her being mad. So is is possible for me to somehow restore these deleted photos? Or is it possible to somehow un-blur the photos that she had received? Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.
Response by poster: I just checked, and Low Quality Image Mode is/was off.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:41 PM on July 3, 2018
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:41 PM on July 3, 2018
Other troubleshooting questions:
What kind of iPhones do you have?
Are both of your phones running the same version of iOS?
On each phone, go to Settings > Camera > Formats. I wonder if your phone is newer/on a newer OS, and your wife's phone can't handle the new photo/video format Apple has been using. See "Sharing this media" here.
posted by emelenjr at 4:53 PM on July 3, 2018
What kind of iPhones do you have?
Are both of your phones running the same version of iOS?
On each phone, go to Settings > Camera > Formats. I wonder if your phone is newer/on a newer OS, and your wife's phone can't handle the new photo/video format Apple has been using. See "Sharing this media" here.
posted by emelenjr at 4:53 PM on July 3, 2018
How blurry is blurry? Are we talking a slight loss of resolution and some visible JPEG artifacts, or are we talking "looks like a gaussian blur filter was applied?" More information would help to understand what happened and what can be done about it. If you could upload a representative sample, that would be ideal.
As far as recovering the originals, I don't think so. If they're not in the cloud and you've cleared your Recently Deleted folder, I'm pretty sure they're gone for good. The only thing I can think of would be if your camera roll also synced to another app, like Dropbox or Lightroom Mobile. Someone else may correct me though.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:46 PM on July 3, 2018
As far as recovering the originals, I don't think so. If they're not in the cloud and you've cleared your Recently Deleted folder, I'm pretty sure they're gone for good. The only thing I can think of would be if your camera roll also synced to another app, like Dropbox or Lightroom Mobile. Someone else may correct me though.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:46 PM on July 3, 2018
Oh also, what do the sent images look like on your end? Can you go back into the text message thread and re-save the images to your phone from there? If they look good on your side they may be recoverable. I just tested it on my own iPhone and it seemed to work.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:51 PM on July 3, 2018
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 6:51 PM on July 3, 2018
The OP deleted the original texts, so the images will be gone as well.
posted by Roger Pittman at 7:30 PM on July 3, 2018
posted by Roger Pittman at 7:30 PM on July 3, 2018
If you have iCloud Photo Library turned on, you may be able to restore the photos by calling AppleCare and speaking to a Senior Advisor. They have a (limited) ability to restore some deleted content in the iCloud Photo Library.
posted by sixfootaxolotl at 7:54 PM on July 3, 2018
posted by sixfootaxolotl at 7:54 PM on July 3, 2018
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by emelenjr at 4:15 PM on July 3, 2018