Rapid Photo Downloader is a Linux desktop application that imports photos and videos from cameras, phones, memory cards, and other devices at high speed. It is written by a photographer for professional and amateur photographers.
This project has only ever had one software developer. I developed a hand injury from typing while working on the code in early 2022. Code development has slowed considerably as I seek to recover from this serious injury. To work around the injury, fortunately I am able to use the JetBrains editor PyCharm in conjunction with the voice recognition tools Talon and Dragon NaturallySpeaking on Windows / WSL2. While my ability to test the code remains limited, at least I can write it.
I want to thank JetBrains for allowing me to use PyCharm Professional For free under their open source developer program.
I cannot maintain the install.py
script due to my hand injury (see above)
— testing the script in the variety of Linux distributions it supports
requires a lot of typing. The script is therefore depreciated and I do not
recommend its use, especially on recent Linux distributions.
If you have any experience with Rapid Photo Downloader at all, including if you no longer use it, please join hundreds of others by taking this survey:
Survey of past, current, and potential users
The responses are already making a real difference to the program’s future development. The program collects no analytics whatsoever, so a survey like this is truly helpful. Thank you in advance.
- Rename photos and videos with meaningful filenames you specify.
- Download vast numbers of photos and videos with minimum fuss.
- Back up photos and videos as they are downloaded.
- Downloads from and backs up to multiple devices simultaneously.
- Easy to configure and use.
- Configure program preferences without the need for complicated codes.
- Automate common tasks, such as unmounting a memory card when the download is complete.
Read more about its features at the program website.
Full documentation is available at the program website.
Rapid Photo Downloader is coded in Python. To get the best performance using Python on modern multi-core computers, the program uses multiple OS-level processes that communicate with each other using the messaging library 0MQ.
Learn more about the program's architecture.
Report new issues on the developer's GitHub repository.
Historic issues are at the previous code repository, Launchpad.
All project releases are hosted on the project's Launchpad repository.
Get support at the Pixls.us discussion forum.
An install.py
script has been available for the past six years to install
the latest version of the program. As discussed above, unfortunately I can no
longer maintain this script.
The script is therefore depreciated and I do not recommend its use on anything but old Linux distributions.
Instead of using the depreciated install.py
script, I recommend installing
the program using your Linux distribution's standard repositories.
To consult the legacy instructions for using the depreciated install.py
script, see the
documentation at the program's website.
- Python 3.6 or newer, and its development headers
- PyQt 5
- Qt 5
- Qt5 plugin for reading TIFF images
- Qt5 plugin for rendering SVG
- setuptools
- python-gphoto2 1.4.0 or newer
- show-in-file-manager 1.1.2 or newer
- importlib_metadata on Python versions older than 3.8
- pyzmq
- tornado
- psutil 3.4.2 or newer
- pyxdg
- Arrow
- dateutil 2.2 or newer
- exiv2
- ExifTool
- EasyGUI
- Colour
- pymediainfo
- SortedContainers
- Requests
- Tenacity
- intltool
- Babel
- fuse
- imobiledevice-tools
- ifuse
- Python gobject introspection modules:
- GUdev 1.0
- UDisks 2.0
- GLib 2.0
- GExiv2 0.10
- Gst 1.0
- Notify 0.7
Highly recommended, optional dependencies: