A ShotPut Pro and OffShoot alternative built for photographers
ShotPut Pro and OffShoot are excellent offload tools, designed for film sets. If you come home from a wedding with eight cards, dual-slot pairs and a drone card you never format, you have different problems. Récolte was built for those.
By William Desse, photographer and creator of Récolte · October 15, 2026
Built for a film set, used by photographers
Most verified-offload apps grew up around video production. Their users are DITs and camera assistants, and their features follow: ASC MHL manifests for the post house, LTO tape, cloud destinations, cascading copies from a shuttle drive to the archive.
A photographer's evening looks different. You plug in a card reader, sometimes two. Half of your cards are the second slot of the other half. One card mixes this weekend with last month's session. You want to pull each card as soon as it's done, and before you format anything, you want one clear answer: is everything safe?
That's the job Récolte does. It verifies every copy like the video tools do, and adds what a photographer needs around it.
Récolte, ShotPut Pro and OffShoot at a glance
| Récolte | ShotPut Pro | OffShoot | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Photographers and hybrid shooters | Media professionals, film and broadcast | Video professionals, DITs, studios |
| Platforms | macOS, Windows | macOS, Windows | macOS, Windows |
| Price | €49/year, or €199 lifetime with updates included | $169 perpetual (Mac), updates $59/year after the first year | $169 perpetual with one year of updates; Pro $249 |
| Short-term option | — | $60 for 30 days | $49 for 30 days |
| Trial | 14 days, full app, no credit card | Demo: 10 offloads within 30 days | 10 days, full app |
| Copy verified by reading it back | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Several destinations at once | Yes, no limit | Yes | Yes |
| ASC MHL manifests | No | Yes | See vendor |
Competitor prices and features as listed on imagineproducts.com and hedge.co in October 2026. Check their sites for current offers.
What Récolte does for a photographer's offload
Dual-slot pairs, offloaded once
Récolte recognises files by their content, not their name. When the second card of a dual-slot pair goes in, every file already secured from its twin is skipped, whichever card you started with. If a new card has exactly the same file count and size as one already done, Récolte asks you whether to verify it anyway, eject it, or set it aside.
Know which card to pull, from which port
Each card is copied in parallel and tied to its physical slot. As soon as one shows “Done”, you know which reader and which slot to pull it from, with an eject button for that card alone. You don't wait for the whole batch to move on.
Cards you never format
Drone, 360 and action-cam cards pile up several outings. Récolte notices when a card spans several dates and lets you pick which ones belong to this project. Files from DJI, GoPro and Insta360 can go into their own folders automatically.
Checking cards you copied by hand
Not every card goes through an offload app. The Verify cards tool takes any folder, even one you filled by drag and drop months ago, and tells you whether each card's photos and videos are all in there. It matches by content, so renamed or reorganised files still count.
A verdict before you format, even after a crash
Every file is hashed on the card, copied, then read back from the drive and hashed again. Each verified file is recorded the moment it's confirmed, so a crash or a power cut resumes exactly where it stopped. At the end, the report says either “everything is verified” or exactly what needs your attention, and you can export it as a PDF.
Backup drives that stay in sync
Copy to as many drives as you want in one pass, or add a backup drive later from the report. The Compare folders tool shows what's missing between two drives and fills the gap, and it finds duplicates piled up over the years, moving them to a separate folder rather than deleting them.
When ShotPut Pro or OffShoot is the better choice
Récolte isn't the right tool for every job. Pick one of the video tools if:
- A post house asks for ASC MHL manifests. ShotPut Pro writes them. Récolte verifies every copy and gives you a PDF report, but writes no MHL or checksum files.
- You send offloads straight to the cloud. OffShoot Pro supports S3 destinations. Récolte works only with drives connected to your computer.
- You need a license for a single job. Both offer a 30-day rental. Récolte has a yearly plan or a lifetime license.
- You run a DIT cart or a team with scripting, API access or tape archiving. Récolte is a single-user tool, one activation at a time.
Why I built it
I offloaded two one-hour video takes, copied them to a second SSD and formatted my cards for the next day's job. Two days later, the first 51 GB file was corrupted, on both drives. A recovery app, then a lab: €619 and four weeks of stress before I had a readable file to give my client.
No error had shown up during the copy. That's the gap Récolte closes: it reads every copy back and compares it to the original, so a bad copy is flagged before you format, not three days later.
Coming from Red Giant Offload?
Red Giant's Offload brought verified copies to many photographers, and it's no longer sold as a standalone app. Récolte covers the same core, a verified copy to several drives at once, and adds the photo-specific tools above.
FAQ
Is there a free alternative to ShotPut Pro or OffShoot?
Yes: command-line tools such as rsync can copy with checksums, and a few free offload apps exist, mostly aimed at film sets. Récolte is paid, but the 14-day trial is the full app, with no credit card required.
Does Récolte verify copies byte for byte?
Yes. Every file is hashed on the card, copied, then read back from the destination drive and hashed again. A file is only marked verified when both hashes match.
Does Récolte write ASC MHL or checksum manifest files?
No. Récolte verifies every copy and gives you a PDF report, but it does not write MHL files. If a post house requires MHL, ShotPut Pro or OffShoot is the better fit.
Does Récolte run on Windows?
Yes. Récolte runs on macOS and Windows.
Which cards and file formats does Récolte support?
Any card your computer mounts as a drive: SD, microSD, CFexpress, CFast. Récolte copies all common RAW formats, JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, video including MXF, BRAW and R3D, and audio, with sidecar files such as XMP kept next to their media file.