gPhoto is a set of software applications

Application software

Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

 and libraries for use in digital photography

Digital photography

Digital photography is a form of photography that uses an array of light sensitive sensors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on light sensitive film...

. gPhoto supports not just retrieving of images from camera devices, but also upload and remote controlled configuration and capture, depending on whether the camera supports those features.

Released under the GNU Lesser General Public License

GNU Lesser General Public License

The GNU Lesser General Public License or LGPL is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation . It was designed as a compromise between the strong-copyleft GNU General Public License or GPL and permissive licenses such as the BSD licenses and the MIT License...

, gPhoto is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

.

Support

gPhoto supports more than 1200 cameras as of April 2010. It is cross-platform

Cross-platform

In computing, cross-platform, or multi-platform, is an attribute conferred to computer software or computing methods and concepts that are implemented and inter-operate on multiple computer platforms...

, running under Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

, FreeBSD

FreeBSD

FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

, NetBSD

NetBSD

NetBSD is a freely available open source version of the Berkeley Software Distribution Unix operating system. It was the second open source BSD descendant to be formally released, after 386BSD, and continues to be actively developed. The NetBSD project is primarily focused on high quality design,...

 and other Unix-like

Unix-like

A Unix-like operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, while not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification....

 operating systems.

gPhoto has support for the Picture Transfer Protocol

Picture Transfer Protocol

Picture Transfer Protocol is a widely supported protocol developed by the International Imaging Industry Association to allow the transfer of images from digital cameras to computers and other peripheral devices without the need of additional device drivers...

 (PTP) and will also connect to devices that use the Media Transfer Protocol

Media Transfer Protocol

The Media Transfer Protocol is a devised set of custom extensions to the Picture Transfer Protocol . Whereas PTP was designed for downloading photographs from digital cameras, Media Transfer Protocol supports the transfer of music files on digital audio players and media files on portable media...

. Many cameras are not supported by gPhoto, but have support for the USB mass-storage device class, which is well-supported under Linux.

gPhoto support camera tethering control, preview, viewfinder in PTP or camera specfic protocols on numerous cameras.

Applications

gPhoto provides a library, libgphoto2, to allow for other frontends to be written for it, and a command-line interface

Command-line interface

A command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...

. gtkam

Gtkam

gtkam is the official GTK+2-based front-end to libgphoto2; it provides a graphical user interface that allows the user to import photos, and possibly other material such as video, from digital cameras....

 is the official GUI

Graphical user interface

In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...

 client for gPhoto. Other clients are the KDE

KDE

KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...

 program digiKam

DigiKam

digiKam is an image organizer and editor using KDE Platform. It runs on most known desktop environments and window managers if the required libraries are installed. It supports all major image file formats, and can organize collections of photographs in directory-based albums, or dynamic albums by...

 and the GNOME

GNOME

GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

 program Shotwell

Shotwell (software)

Shotwell is an image organizer designed to provide personal photo management for the GNOME desktop environment. It has replaced F-Spot as the standard image tool for several GNOME-based Linux distributions, including Fedora in version 13 and Ubuntu in its 10.10 Maverick Meerkat...

. GVFS

GVFS

GVFS is the virtual filesystem for the GNOME desktop, which allows users easy access to remote data via SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, SMB, and local data via HAL integration, OBEX and others....

uses libphoto2 to expose on-camera photos to GNOME applications via a virtual filesystem.

DigiKam, Gtkam and Entangle supports tethering capture and viewfinder for supported cameras.

External links

• List of supported cameras