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title:  gPhoto home
keywords: digital camera, camera support, linux, freebsd, mtp, ptp, canon, sony, libgphoto2, gphoto2, camera access, media transfer protocol, mtp support, ptp support
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<h2>Freedom from film</h2>
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	<p><img src="img/logo.png" width="321" height="395" alt="gPhoto2 Logo" 
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    	<p>
	<b>libgphoto2 and gphoto2 2.5.2</b> have been
	released. Read <a href="/news/"><b>what's new</b></a>.
	Download it <a href="/download/"><b>now</b></a>.
    	</p>
	<div style="text-align: right;"><b>May 5th, 2013</b></div>
    	<p>

	<b>libgphoto2 and gphoto2 2.5.1</b> have been
	released. Read <a href="/news/"><b>what's new</b></a>.
	Download it <a href="/download/"><b>now</b></a>.
    	</p>
	<div style="text-align: right;"><b>Jan 27th, 2013</b></div>

    	<p>
	<b>libgphoto2 and gphoto2 2.5.0</b> have been
	released. Read <a href="/news/"><b>what's new</b></a>.
	Download it <a href="/download/"><b>now</b></a>.
    	</p>
	<div style="text-align: right;"><b>July 10th, 2012</b></div>

    	<p>
	<b>libgphoto2 and gphoto2 2.4.14</b> have been
	released. Read <a href="/news/"><b>what's new</b></a>.
	Download it <a href="/download/"><b>now</b></a>.
    	</p>
	<div style="text-align: right;"><b>April 15th, 2012</b></div>


	 <p>Digital cameras have the balance of quality, features, and 
    price that appeals to users looking for a fast and convenient
    way to get images into their PC. You can spend a lot more -- or
    a lot less -- for one than the $100 to $3000 (or even more) these cost, 
    but you 
    won't like the quality at the low end or the prices at the high end. 
    With digital cameras, the best place to be is in the middle.</p>

    <p>No other image-capture option for your computer matches the fun, 
    immediacy, and convenience of a digital camera. Unlike with a 
    scanner, you don't need an preexisting image: A digital 
    camera lets you capture what you see. And unlike film-to-disk 
    services, development is instantaneous: You don't have to wait 
    hours or days before you can use an image on your computer.</p>
  
    <p>Operating a digital camera is also inexpensive, because the only 
    recurring cost is batteries. The camera's storage is reusable once you
    download a batch of images. And since you don't have to pay for film 
    processing, you can go wild.</p>

    <p>Unfortunately, many digital camera manufacturers refuse to share
    their camera communication specifications with their customers and
    millions of users who run free operating systems.</p>

    <p>This is a big obstacle to development of free photo applications,
    and it blocks free software developers from writing free programs, 
    that support the same features as the proprietary digital camera
    programs for Microsoft Windows and MacOS that usually are shipped with 
    the camera.   It renders the camera quite useless if you don't run 
    one of those proprietary operating systems.
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    <h2>Introducing gPhoto2</h2>
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    <p><a href="/proj/"><b>gPhoto2</b></a> is a free, redistributable,
    ready to use set of digital camera software
    applications for Unix-like systems, written by a whole team of dedicated
    volunteers around the world. It supports more than 
    <a href="/proj/libgphoto2/support/">1700 cameras</a></p>
    <p>gPhoto2 runs on a large range of UNIX-like operating system, including
    Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, MacOS X, etc. gPhoto is provided by major Linux distributions
    like Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, etc.</p>
    <p>libgphoto2 is freely available and distributed
    under the terms of the 
    <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html">GNU LGPL.</a>; the other gphoto
    programs are freely available and distributed under the terms of the 
    <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GNU GPL.</a></p>
    <p>
    Newer libgphoto2 versions also support Media Transfer Protocol (MTP)
    based media players since their communications protocol is based on
    the Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP).
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