TWISTED  I bought PhotoRescue via RegSoft four days ago because it seemed to be able to recover the files in my corrupted SD card. Yay! ... BUT as today I'm still waiting for my serial number. RegSoft did not answered to my e-mail asking for information.

Maybe because accidentally I've opened the card through the Finder, now the demo version cannot recover the pictures anymore! I've lost a lot of time and my hope to recover my pictures just because this crappy buying method. The next time I will search for the pirated version!  
(Version 3.1.12.12057)

THEBLUENOWHERE  I use PhotoRec by CGSecurity. It's free and open source and although it is command line based it is easy to use for the relatively inexperienced. It tries to recover all files not just pictures...

...Wait a minute this sounds a lot like Photorec but is a touch more expensive - $99 for the "expert version". Check out Photorec before you buy, it might save you money.  
(Version 3.1.11.12024)

MISHA  Like others, I have only a success story to share about this app. It got back about 98% of the photos from an SD card that I accidentally deleted. This was version 2, mind you, but the only issue I had was that the date created and files names were quite garbled... which meant there was a bit of legwork needed to put the photos in correct chronological order again.

My only complaint is that the upgrade from version 2 to version 3 is $19. I already paid $29 for the app... upgrades to tools like this should always be   
(Version 3.1.7.11394)

M4RTIN  When I needed to recover RAW image files from a Compact Flash card that my Nikon D70S showed in the camera but were not visible through the card reader I tried a few apps. PhotoRescue is the only one that worked and it was fast and simple to use.

Exif Untrasher could not find the images. FAIL.

CardRaider took several hours of preparation then crashed. FAIL.

FileSalvage couldn't find anything. FAIL.

PhotoRescue allows you to see if it can locate the missing files in demo mode before paying for the app. Once the items are located you sign up and when the registration code arrives you can then save the recovered files.

US$30 is a fair price for something that works so well and does what the other apps mentioned above could not.

I don't normally write reviews for apps but as finding this one was such a task I figured this might help others in the same situation.  
(Version 3.1.7.11394)

COLETTE  Works very nice.  
(Version 3.1.7.11394)

MINIMARC  very helpful  
(Version 3.1.7.11394)

TOMDOHERTY  Weird ...I actually have this particular version 3.1.6 (Build 1178) which I downloaded from a MacUpdate announcement on July 2nd, 2008!!  
(Version 3.1.6.11178)

MOK  I bought this program after accidentally losing almost all my pictures and memories. I used it program to scour many hard drives and laptops that, at some point, had contained my pictures. For what this program did -- recover many photos that I thought I had lost forever -- it was worth every penny and much more.

However, I felt that much could be improved. Scanning a 30GB and 120GB disks took over 12 hours of 100% CPU computations. In neither case did the analysis actually end by itself: I had to click "Cancel", after which, the program retrieved whatever files it had found. If I left the program scan my drive much longer, it sometimes would stop responding and would have to be force quit. There is no real progress indicator, just a fake indicator that goes from 0% to 100% a million times. Since you only see the last 4-5 pictures it saw, and those are usually bogus pics that came from a random app on the hard drive, there's no way to know how many pictures have been found, what they look like, and what percentage of the disk has been scanned. The programs also retrieved some very large movie .avi files, and all .pdf and .wav that it found. I suspect a lot of time was spent reconstituting these large movies and I wish there was the option to skip them and focus on the pictures. I'm disappointed by the fact that I suspect that I could have found more pictures (though it did find 12,000 pictures in perfect condition, many of which were the ones I was looking for)...

So all in all, the interface is spartan, there are not enough options, and progress feedback is woefully lacking. On a hard drive, the scanning is also extremely SLOOOW. But on the other hand, it did find a huge number of perfect/uncorrupted pictures (and PDF/AVI/WAVs) in erased and overwritten hard drives, and for that alone, this program was a life saver (but an imperfect one).  
(Version 3.1.1.10323)

HOLGATIM  Worked like a dream. My CF card wouldn't mount of the desktop which meant that 'Exif Untrash' was not going to do the job. Returning the card to the camera brought the message 'This card must be formated.' My card had been used in two cameras (Canon and Fuji) and had over 150 images on it. Once one of the recovery methods latched on to the exif structure, the program worked through the 512MB card and saved all the images with no degradation in quality.

The manual is a little thin on program operation. For example, pressing the 'cancel' button after a long search through the card didn't roughly cancel out the recovery, but gave a graceful way out with a couple of options. Just put the card in the card reader, the program will find it at the USB port and recovery in on the way. Well done! It WILL do the job if at all possible.  
(Version 2.1.665)

HENRIK DALGAARD  This app rescured my holiday pictures after iPhoto had erased my compact flash card, but not imported the images.

The application is simple to use, although not that polished. The important thing, is to save the images!

The registration which is required to save the images is a bit long, and you need to rescan the flash card, after you receive the unlocked copy by email. The web page says the unlocked version may take 12 hours to arrive (I can see the images - I want them saved now - not in 12 hours). It took only 10 minutes though, and after my rescan I got the pictures I missed, and discovered a lot of very old images on the card too :-)  
(Version 2.0)