Quote Originally Posted by Jessieh04
My neighbor who knows nothing about photography (you'll see in just a moment) just got back from a 5 week trip to Europe but had her canon point and shoot on color accent so all her photos are black and white. I never use any in-camera processing so I wanted to ask if there a program or anything that can recover those color files. I don't even know the process for which cameras store the info, I am sure it is a long shot. My best guess is the original can not be recovered, but I promised her I'd ask at a forum.

Thanks guys!
As others have said, if it shot RAW, and recorded RAW (usually an option) then she might be OK. The bad news is that the only Canon P&S cameras that could record RAW out of the box were the G series (I think), not usually sold to beginners. Others could do it through the hacked CHDK software, but you've got to be a camera nerd to be using that.