Introduction

JpegDigger was created out of an immediate need. Because of My Jpeg repair service people also contact me to ask if I can repair corrupt RAW image format files. I can not at this time, nor do I have the time to investigate these file formats.

It is common knowledge that a lot of RAW image files contain embedded JPEGs and for some that is better than nothing at all. For those people I was able to Extract JPEG files from RAW image files on several occasions. I use a hex editor for that. Some times I do it for free (for a few files), normally I charge the Low Res Preview extraction fee (see).

At some point I had to do a huge load of .NEF (Nikon RAW files) so I decided it was time to put together a utility (JpegDigger) to process all .NEF files in a given directory.

Note this software is quad (quick and dirty) and there is lots of room for optimization. Which I will do as soon as I find the time. Anyway, you need to consider that the initial impulse to write the tool is for me to have something to extract JPEGs from RAW files automatically. Until now I had to:

- Open each RAW file in a hex editor.
- Search for a JPEG header.
- Search for an end marker.
- Copy the block between the two into another file with a .JPG extension.

So there you have it. Far from perfect and nothing like the awesome JPEGsnoop, but it fits my needs.

Supported file types (RAW and other)

Currently supported RAW file types: .NEF, .CR2, .CRW, .ORF, .ARW, .SRW, .PEF, .DNG, .3FR, .RAF and .RW2 RAW camera images. These RAW types were selected because at least some of the files for each of these types I examined appeared to embed JPGs. Also supported are JPG and CHK. JPEG to allow for extraction of smaller resolution previews. CHK is useful for recovering images from .CHK files from a memory card on which chkdsk was run. December 2018 version adds PSD file support. Note that they only appear to embed tiny JPEG previews.

Operation is self explanatory, just run JpegDigger > Select folder containing the (corrupt) RAW files. Alternatively drop a RAW file on the JpegDigger EXE file.

In the options screen you need to set the scan depth and the type of file we're processing. Scan depth simply limits the part of the RAW file that will be examined. As I was interested in .NEF files (Nikon) when I wrote the tool, the 15% value is based on .NEF files. Since then I already discovered some .DNG files which had a JPEG embbeded towards the end of the file. Which means you will need to experiment. A higher value will increase time needed to process a file. 

JpegDigger will create a subfolder for output in selected folder. It's therefor advise to move the corrupt RAW files to your hard disk rather than the memory card to avoid running out of disk space issues.

It can happen JpegDigger saves for example small 160x120 thumbnails with a ridiculously large size (> several MB). To fix size issue, open the file in a photo editor (Paint.net for example) and save.

Versions:
1.0.0.67 (June 25, 2017) - initial release 
1.1.0.0 (June 27, 2017) - Drag & drop: drop file on EXE and source path is set. Better end of file detection (for the JPEG).
1.2.0.6 (January 30, 2018) - Added JPG and CHK as source file options. Fixed problem extracting from certain NEF and CR2 files. Better detection of 'nested' JPEGs.
1.3.0.0 (December 29, 2018) - Updated signatures, severarl UI tweaks and added a FB like button.

JpegDigger is freeware. (c) by Joep van Steen - joep@disktuna.com

http://www.disktuna.com
