Get started with PDR

Applies to: Photo Date Rescue for Windows, version 3.0.4. Last verified: 30 July 2026. Every statement on this page was checked against the shipping 3.0.4 build. If you are on an older or newer version, the behavior may differ — check What’s new for changes.

This is the page for your first hour with PDR. It describes what you actually see when the app opens, what has to happen before the rest of it unlocks, and how to get through a first run without putting a single one of your photographs at risk.

There are only two things you must do before PDR is useful: enter a license key, and choose a Library Drive — the drive where your organized library will live. Everything else on this page is optional, and everything else in the app waits for those two.

PDR is a Windows desktop application, for Windows 10 and 11. There is no macOS or Linux build, no web version of the desktop app, and nothing to install on your phone.

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At a glance

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The screen PDR opens on

PDR opens on a Welcome screen rather than dropping you into a blank document. Under the heading “Everything Photo Date Rescue can do” are six cards, one for each part of the app: Workspace, Search & Discovery, Memories, Trees, People and Collages. Each says in a line what it is for. Above them are a Take a Quick Tour card and a Best Practices card, and a Pick Library Drive card — which is the one that matters first.

On a brand-new install those six cards are dimmed and cannot be clicked, and a line of text under the heading tells you why: These open once you’ve set a Library Drive. The Go to Workspace link is grayed out at the same time. This is not a trial restriction and it is not something going wrong. PDR needs to know where the library belongs before it will let you build one.

As soon as PDR has a destination — either one you have just chosen, or one it remembers from a previous session — the cards light up and stay lit, including on later launches when that drive happens to be unplugged.

Limitations

• The lock is all or nothing. There is no partial state where you can look around Memories or Search before choosing a drive. Six cards, one gate.
• Once it unlocks, it stays unlocked. PDR remembers that you have used a destination before, so the cards are clickable even when the drive holding the library is not connected. Opening a view that needs the library while the drive is away is a different problem — see when files change outside PDR.
• The Welcome screen is a menu, not a wizard. It does not walk you through setup step by step, and it does not stop you clicking into the Workspace and adding sources before you have thought about where the results should go.

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Activating, with no account to create

There is no PDR account and no sign-in. No email and password, no profile, no library of yours held on a server, no way for anyone to sign in as you. What PDR needs is a license key, which you paste in once.

Activating that key needs an internet connection the first time, because the key is checked with our payment provider and tied to the machine you are on. After that PDR works offline. It re-checks the key when it can, and if it has not managed to for seven days it stops treating the license as current until it gets online again. Your files are not held hostage by this — nothing at your destination is locked, encrypted or removed — but the app itself will want to see the network eventually.

To do it

1. Install PDR and open it.
2. Paste in the license key you were sent.
3. Let it check. On success you are activated on this machine and can carry on offline.

Limitations

• The first activation cannot be done offline. A machine that has never been online cannot be activated, however valid your key is.
• A free trial is limited, and not only by file count. Some parts of the app stay closed on a trial license, and there are caps on how much you can process. See pricing for what each plan includes.
• The key is tied to the machine. Moving to a new PC means activating there. The same key is also what lets a new machine reconnect to a library you built on the old one — see restoring onto a replacement PC. A lost key is a lost reconnection.
• Your photographs have nothing to do with any of this. No image, no filename and no folder path is sent when a license is checked. See running with no account, and nothing uploaded.

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Choosing where the library lives

This is the decision the rest of the app is waiting on. The Library Drive is where your organized photos are written and where PDR keeps a copy of its own records. It can be an internal disk, an external drive, or a folder on your network. PDR does not just take whatever you point at: it looks at the drive, compares its free space against the size of what you are planning to bring in, and tells you plainly when the choice is a bad one — your boot drive, a drive that is too small, a network share that will be slow.

To do it

1. On the Welcome screen, choose Pick Library Drive.
2. Select an internal disk, an external drive, or a network folder.
3. Read what PDR says about it. If it warns you, the warning is worth acting on.
4. Confirm. The six capability cards unlock and the Workspace becomes available.

How PDR sizes the job, which drives it recommends and when it refuses a run outright are covered in detail on choosing which drive should hold the library and measuring the collection before you start.

Limitations

• One Library Drive is active at a time. Switching to a new one is a deliberate move rather than a second copy. See backing up the library database and your projects.
• Choosing a drive does not copy anything to it. It sets the destination. Your photos move only when you run a Fix.
• PDR will not stop you putting the library on the same drive as your photos. It is slower and it gives you no protection if that disk fails, and you will not be warned about it. Use a different drive if you have one.

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A first run that cannot cost you anything

Everything PDR does to your photographs on a first run is a copy. You add a folder as a source, PDR reads it, and it writes corrected copies to your Library Drive. The folder you pointed it at is not moved, not renamed, not re-dated and not deleted. When the run finishes it is exactly as you left it. That is worth knowing before your first attempt, because it means a first run cannot go badly wrong — at worst it produces a destination folder you do not like, which you delete.

To do it

1. Pick one folder to start with rather than a whole drive. A few hundred photos is plenty to see what PDR does with yours.
2. Open the Workspace and choose Add Source.
3. Choose Analyze and let it finish. Nothing has been written yet.
4. Choose Preview Changes and read the old names against the new ones.
5. If you are happy, choose Run Fix. If you are not, close the preview and nothing has happened.
6. Open the destination folder in Windows and look at what arrived.

Each of those steps, and what it does and does not guarantee, is set out on running a Fix safely. Read seeing what it intends to do before you commit before you run anything large — the preview has a limit worth knowing about.

Limitations

• There is no undo for a completed run. There does not need to be one to protect your originals, because they were never touched — but the destination is yours to tidy up if you change your mind.
• A first run needs free space for a full copy. PDR copies rather than moves, so the destination needs room for everything you feed it.
• Start small deliberately. PDR will happily take a whole drive on your first attempt. Learning what it does to a hundred photographs is faster than learning it on a hundred thousand.

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Finding your way around

Everything is reached from the sidebar down the left of the main window. Seven places to go:

• Workspace — where you add sources and run a Fix. Once a run is in progress or finished, the same entry is labeled Dashboard.
• Search & Discovery — finding a photo again, by what you know about it. See searching on the facts you can state.
• Memories — browsing the library by date rather than by folder. See a browsable timeline built without you arranging anything.
• Trees — the people from your photographs arranged as a family tree.
• People — checking and correcting who PDR thinks is in each picture.
• Collages — laying photographs out for print or posting.
• Recycle Bin — what you have removed inside PDR, before it goes.

Below those is a Guidance group holding Quick Tour, Getting Started, Best Practices and What Happens Next. Those four open as panels over whatever you are looking at, so you do not lose your place to read one.

Limitations

• People and Collages open in separate windows. They are not panels inside the main window. Expect a second window to appear, and expect it to be managed by Windows like any other — it can end up behind the main window if you click away from it.
• Navigation is done by clicking. Views are reached from the sidebar or the Welcome cards; there is no keyboard shortcut that jumps between them. The one global shortcut is Ctrl + /, which opens Ask PDR.
• Every view except the Workspace needs a library with something in it. Memories, Search, Trees and People all describe photographs PDR has already indexed. Before your first Fix they have nothing to show you.

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Making things bigger on screen

Only partly, and it is worth knowing exactly where it works. Four surfaces have their own zoom: the Welcome screen, the first-run setup where you choose sources and a destination, the Workspace dashboard, and the People window. On each of those you can zoom from 60% to 150% in steps of five, either with the controls in the bottom-right corner or by holding Ctrl and turning the mouse wheel. Each surface remembers its own setting separately and keeps it between sessions, so you can have a comfortable Workspace and a normal-sized Welcome screen at the same time.

Limitations

• Memories, Search & Discovery, Trees and Collages have no zoom of their own. The Workspace setting does not carry into them; they render at their normal size whatever you have set elsewhere. Memories and Search have their own tile-size controls, which change how big the pictures are but not the rest of the interface.
• Ctrl and the mouse wheel only works on a surface that has a zoom. On the Workspace it is limited to the dashboard, so the same gesture does nothing once you have switched to another view in that window.
• This is a convenience, not an accessibility feature. It scales what is on screen. It is not a substitute for Windows display scaling, a screen magnifier or a screen reader, and we are not going to present it as one.
• The setting is per machine. It lives on the PC you set it on and does not travel with your license or your library.

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Being shown round instead of reading about it

Yes. PDR has guided walkthroughs that highlight parts of the interface in order and explain what each one is for. They are not videos and they are not a separate help window — they run over the real app, on your real data.

You reach them from the Tours & guidance button in the title bar. What the menu offers depends on where you are: on the Workspace you get Quick Tour: Workspace, in Search you get Quick Tour: Search & Discovery, in Memories Quick Tour: Memories, in Trees Quick Tour: Family Trees. On the Dashboard there is an extra one for Reports History. Below the tours the same menu opens Ask PDR, Getting Started, Best Practices, What Happens Next, Help & Support and About PDR. There is also a Take a Quick Tour card on the Welcome screen.

Nothing is one-time. A tour can be replayed as often as you like, and dismissing one does not remove it from the menu.

Limitations

• The title-bar button is disabled until the Workspace is open. Hovering it before then tells you so. Tours are anchored to real controls, and until the Workspace exists there is nothing for them to point at.
• There is no tour for People or Collages. Those open in their own windows, and the tour menu belongs to the main one.
• The Reports History tour only appears on the Dashboard. Look for it anywhere else and it is not in the list.
• A tour describes the interface, not your library. It shows you where things are. It does not check your settings or tell you whether what you are about to do is a good idea.

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Going straight to work on later launches

Yes. At the bottom of the Welcome screen is a checkbox marked Skip this screen next time. Tick it and PDR goes straight to the Workspace on every future launch. It is a preference, not a one-way door: there is a matching setting in the app’s settings that brings the Welcome screen back.

Limitations

• The checkbox is disabled until you have set a destination. It is grayed out alongside the capability cards on a brand-new install, for the same reason — there is nowhere useful to skip to yet.
• It is remembered on this machine only. The preference is stored locally. Install PDR on another PC and you get the Welcome screen there.
• Skipping the screen does not skip the setup. If you have not chosen a Library Drive, you have not chosen one, and the Workspace will still be waiting on that decision.

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Known gaps in 3.0.4

The things a new user most often expects to find and does not:

1. Zoom is not app-wide. It covers the Welcome screen, first-run setup, the Workspace dashboard and the People window. Memories, Search & Discovery, Trees and Collages have no zoom control.
2. Tours cannot be started before the Workspace is open, and there is no tour for People or Collages.
3. Nothing warns you when your photos and your library end up on the same drive. PDR checks whether the drive is big enough and whether it is a sensible type, but not whether it is the same disk your sources are on.
4. There is no undo for a completed Fix. Your originals are never touched, so nothing can be lost — but clearing an unwanted destination is a job you do in Windows.
5. Windows only. There is no macOS or Linux build.

When any of these changes, this page and the comparison table change together, and the “last verified” date at the top of this page moves with them.

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How to check this page is still true

Every claim here describes behavior you can observe in the shipping build. If something on this page does not match what PDR does on your machine, that is a defect in one of the two, and we want to know: contact support. Tell us the anchor — for example /help/getting-started#summary — and we will either correct the software or correct the page.