Ah with you!
1) You had files in 'My Pictures'.
2) You deleted them so they went into the recycle bin.
3) You ran ccleaner with 'Empty Recycle Bin' checked and 'Secure Deletion' set.
4) You were then able to recover the pictures.
Sorry ... probably me being slow
Did you look in the recycle bin before you ran ccleaner to make sure that the files were there before you ran ccleaner?
Could these files have existed elsewhere on the drive first ... maybe copied to 'My Documents' from somewhere else? <<--- You mean, like in a system restore trove, or backup copy?
Also ... to convince yourself that secure deletion works ... do a right-click on one of the files in Recuva and securely delete it ... then run Recuva again.
<marmite>Could these files have existed elsewhere on the drive first ... maybe copied to 'My Documents' from somewhere else?</marmite> <<--- You mean, like in a system restore trove, or backup copy?
Nope ... just anywhere else on the drive. I often copy files around ... the 'recuvad' file could have been another copy of the file that had previously been deleted.