- Description
- Install on Ubuntu, openSUSE, Debian, Fedora, and CentOS 8
- Install on CentOS 7.5
- Supported Linux Versions
Rapid Photo Downloader imports photos and videos from cameras, phones, memory cards and other devices at high speed. It can be configured to rename photos and videos with meaningful filenames you specify. It can also back up photos and videos as they are downloaded. It downloads from and backs up to multiple devices simultaneously.
Unique to Rapid Photo Downloader is its Timeline, which groups photos and videos based on how much time elapsed between consecutive shots. Use it to identify photos and videos taken at different periods in a single day or over consecutive days.
Written by a photographer for professional and amateur photographers, Rapid Photo Downloader is easy to configure and use. Program preferences are configured without the need for complicated codes. Common tasks can be automated, such as unmounting a memory card when the download is complete.
A helper command-line program accompanying Rapid Photo Downloader is analyze_pv_structure
, which analyzes photos and videos to help determine how much of a file needs to be read to extract its metadata and thumbnail.
Rapid Photo Downloader currently runs only on Linux. Theoretically it could be ported to both Mac and Windows with minimal effort. The one gotcha is that that Windows lacks gphoto2, meaning when run under Windows, it could not download directly from cameras unless it used something else.
The program is licensed under the GPL3 or later.
To install Rapid Photo Downloader, run as your regular user (i.e. without sudo):
python3 install.py
The program sudo may prompt for your administrator (root) password during the install process, if required.
For a list of optional commands you can give the insaller, run:
python3 install.py --help
Finally, to uninstall:
python3 -m pip uninstall rapid-photo-downloader
If you installed the man pages, they are found in /usr/local/share/man/man1
.
Consult the online documentation for additional steps to take prior to running the installation script. Once completed, the steps are the same as above, except the command python3
is replaced by python3.6
- Ubuntu 16.04 or newer
- LinuxMint 18 or newer
- Debian 9, unstable or testing
- Fedora 32 or newer
- openSUSE Leap 15.1 or newer
- CentOS 7.5 or 8
- Any distribution meeting the software requirements below
The program is installed using the Python tool pip, which automates almost all aspects of the program's installation by using PyPi to download Python modules.
Rapid Photo Downloader requires:
- Python 3.5 or greater, and its development headers
- PyQt 5.4 or greater
- Qt 5.4 or greater
- Python gobject introspection modules:
- GUdev 1.0
- UDisks 2.0
- GLib 2.0
- GExiv2 0.10
- Gst 1.0
- Notify 0.7
- python-gphoto2 1.4.0 or newer
- pyzmq
- tornado
- psutil 3.4.2 or newer
- pyxdg
- Arrow
- dateutil 2.2 or newer
- exiv2
- ExifTool
- EasyGUI 0.97.4 or older (0.98 has a critical bug)
- Colour
- pymediainfo
- SortedContainers
- rawkit: renders thumbnails from RAW images from which a thumbnail cannot be extracted using libraw, which is especially useful when downloading DNG files from Android phones or working with old RAW formats.
- Qt5 plugin for reading TIFF images
- Requests
- Tenacity
- intltool
- Babel
Highly recommended, optional dependencies:
While Rapid Photo Downloader's installer will automatically download and install most required Python modules not already found on your system, there are some it cannot install. You must install these Python modules and a few other programs prior to installing Rapid Photo Downloader. The Python module requirements are the Python 3 versions of:
- PyQt 5.4 or greater
- All Python gobject introspection modules listed above
The non-Python programs required are:
- ExifTool
- exiv2
- Given python-gphoto2 will almost certainly be installed from PyPi, the development packages for libgphoto2 and Python3 must be installed first, e.g. libgphoto2-dev and python3-dev
- Likewise, given pymediainfo will almost certainly be installed from PyPi, the package libmediainfo must be installed.
- If installing pyzmq from PyPi, you must first install the development packages for libzmq3 and Python3, e.g. libzmq3-dev and python3-dev
- Qt5 plugin for reading TIFF images
- If installing rawkit from PyPi, libraw is required, e.g. libraw10 or libraw15.
- If installing EasyGUI from PyPi, ensure the Tkinter package for Python 3 is installed.
After satisfying software requirements using your Linux distribution's standard package installation tools, you should install Rapid Photo Downloader using the following steps.
First, you may need to update your user's copy of pip and setuptools:
python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade pip
python3 -m pip install --user --upgrade setuptools wheel
The following command will install all required and optional Python modules not already installed on your system, with the exception of those specified above in satisfying software requirements:
python3 install.py
Caution: untarring the archive, building it and installing it using sudo python3 setup.py install
is not supported, and not recommended.
Assuming you installed using the instructions above, run:
python3 -m pip uninstall rapid-photo-downloader
If you installed the man pages, they are found in /usr/local/share/man/man1
.
Rapid Photo Downloader can be installed into a virtual environment, allowing you to isolate the Python packages it needs from other programs on your system.
Virtual environments created with the --system-site-packages option are not supported. An Intel or AMD 64 bit platform is required.
To install Rapid Photo Downloader into a Python virtual environment, create the virtual environment (naming it whatever you like):
python3 -m venv myenv
Activate the virtual environment:
source myenv/bin/activate
Then run the installer, passing the command line option telling the script to install Rapid Photo Downloader into the virtual environment:
python install.py --virtual-env
Once the program is installed, you can then deactivate the virtual environment with the deactivate command:
deactivate
Rapid Photo Downloader can be started without activating the virtual environment by running
myenv/bin/rapid-photo-downloader
To uninstall from the virtual environment, simply delete the virtual environment's directory.