Extracting the jpeg out of .PEF files

klinneth · 03-17-2009, 02:36 PM

Hi all,

So I made the silly mistake of accidentally deleting some .PEF files from my memory card before backing them up on my external hard drive. After some fiddling around, I've been able to recover the files. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a lot of corruption in the files and only 1/3 are valid .PEF files. The rest open up as a smear of colors, mustly white/yellow/purple.

When I look at my recovered files using the Pentax Photo Browser, the preview thumbnail is visible for every picture and looks to be pretty high resolution. This leads me to believe that the embedded jpegs are still intact.

Anybody have any ideas as to how to go about extracting these jpegs? Also, if anybody has had experience recovering .PEF files, are there programs/methods that will give better results recovering the files w/o corruption?

I'm shooting a k20d using a 8gb Transcend SDHC card.

Thanks,
Kenny

Gooshin · 03-17-2009, 02:53 PM

have you tried exporting your corrupted PEF into jpeg and seeing what would happen?

pure guess work on my part.

*k100d* · 03-17-2009, 02:56 PM

in Pentax Photobrowser, an option in the right click menu will allow you to extract the JPEGs

klinneth · 03-17-2009, 03:06 PM

Thanks for that tip k100d. I did try it, but it will prompt me for a location to save the file but it never seems to actually do it. I'm not quite sure whats going on with that.

klinneth · 03-17-2009, 03:09 PM

Gooshin --

The exported jpeg from the bad .PEF looks just like the .PEF does when I open it in Pentax Photo Lab.

Kenny

newmikey · 03-18-2009, 02:55 AM

Originally Posted by klinneth

Gooshin --

The exported jpeg from the bad .PEF looks just like the .PEF does when I open it in Pentax Photo Lab.

Kenny

Try DCRAW with the -e option...

*falconeye* · 03-18-2009, 07:24 AM

Originally Posted by klinneth

Thanks for that tip k100d. I did try it, but it will prompt me for a location to save the file but it never seems to actually do it. I'm not quite sure whats going on with that.

This doesn't work. However, I found a workaround...

I have a version of Pentax Photobrowser which doesn't support the K-m yet. If I load K-m .PEFs, it won't open up them in Pentax Photolaboratory and "Extract JPG..." doesn't create any file.

However...

If you double click the thumbnail, it opens up in the Pentax Photobrowser Viewer (new window). There, you can select "File->Save as..." and a dialog pops up, saying (translated back from German): "Display in simple mode / revert to full size?". Select "No" and you can save the image to a location you choose. You get full resolution JPG images this way.

klinneth · 03-18-2009, 09:39 AM

Thanks for the tip on dcraw. Unfortunately that only grabs the small 320x240? Thumbnail preview. Alas I'm afraid these files are corrupt to the point that even the embedded .jpegs are lost.

Falconeye -- the files won't open up in the Photobrowser Viewer (when you double click the thumbnail). This totally feels like a lost cause.

If anybody wants a crack at the bad files, send me a pm/email and I'll send you a couple of them.

Kenny

*falconeye* · 03-18-2009, 10:48 AM

Originally Posted by klinneth

Falconeye -- the files won't open up in the Photobrowser Viewer (when you double click the thumbnail).

Ok, then your PEF files are broken too badly.

The only thing you could still try is to try another SD-Card reconstruction software. However, now that you already have used some, any other software most likely will bail out.

Under Linux, you could at least mount the device and read the entire content (using the 'dd' command) irrespective of a broken filesystem or not. This keeps your chances (and the data) beyond the reformatting of the SD card which is next.

klinneth · 03-18-2009, 02:25 PM

Thanks Falconeye.

Alas I'm afraid I'm going to have to chalk this up as a loss. I have an image of the card saved that I may revisit in the future. I think I ought to give up for now.

Kenny

*heliphoto* · 03-18-2009, 03:01 PM

When I look at my recovered files using the Pentax Photo Browser, the preview thumbnail is visible for every picture and looks to be pretty high resolution. This leads me to believe that the embedded jpegs are still intact.

Can you view the preview thumbnail at it's full size? If so, just take a screenshot (or multiple screenshots and stitch 'em). I'm not clear whether you can view these embeded jpgs or not, and you'd prob. loose info with the screenshot approach vs. saving the original, but you'd get your pics to some extent...

klinneth · 03-18-2009, 03:30 PM

I went back and looked at them again. I was planning on the screenshot method but I actually realized that the thumbnails are low-res (the size of the ones I have already recovered at this point).

I wish they were full res... anybody know of any programs that will display the full res thumbnails?

Quension · 03-19-2009, 02:00 AM

Originally Posted by klinneth

anybody know of any programs that will display the full res thumbnails?

IrfanView will. You'll need both IrfanView itself and the plugin pack, but under Options->Properties, PlugIns, make sure it's set to "Try to load embedded preview image" or it will go for the raw data instead.

klinneth · 03-19-2009, 07:48 AM

Originally Posted by Quension

IrfanView will. You'll need both IrfanView itself and the plugin pack, but under Options->Properties, PlugIns, make sure it's set to "Try to load embedded preview image" or it will go for the raw data instead.

Quension -- what is the plugin back for IrfanView? I'd like to give this a try.

Kenny

Quension · 03-19-2009, 08:23 AM

On the home page, right side, there are two download links -- one for IrfanView, and one for Plugins/AddOns. You want both, since the second contains PEF support.