Is there a good reason to read and keep all that lines in an array? I don't see a sort or such...

Try the following:

...
open(MYINPUTFILE, "<$load_file"); # open for input
while (my $line = <MYINPUTFILE>) # loop thru list
 {
chomp $line;
my ($hash, $JPG) = ($line =~ m!/([^/]+)/([^/]+)$!) or die;
...
[download]

Update: restored $line var into this code.