10 Best Image Gallery Software
By Partho, Gaea News NetworkTuesday, October 13, 2009
Well, there are loads of photo gallery software out there and a lot more queued up for debut. While looking for an image gallery software you might be bowled over by the mesmerizing features. But, this is not just what you wanna do with the gallery. The key is to consider the merit of the program, and look for the flexibility and adaptability of the gallery script rather than sticking to customizing options. These gallery scripts are great assets for those looking to showcase their items in a pre-established website/web application, without having to write it from scratch. We decided to bring you the 10 best image gallery software .
1. Gallery
One of the most popular and updated photo album organizer, Gallery is an exquisite photo management software for website with personal or large community site. It allows you as many Galleries as you want on your web server, with each gallery accommodating as many photos you want. It’s intuitive web interface enables easy administration of the photo albums. Gallery offers a host of features that include unlimited images and albums, auto image rotation, gallery-wide slideshow, and RSS publishing. It’s outstanding feature is Mirroring albums, which allows users to mirror their albums on as many remote servers as desired. Using this feature you can run your Gallery on a machine with limited bandwidth, but serve up your photos quickly from a high bandwidth source like an ISP. Gallery offers a host of features we picked the most interesting.
Pros
- Configuring the photo album is a child’s play with the configuration wizard. It ensures that the web server and operating system is set up correctly.
- Gallery-wide slideshow enable or disable a slideshow that includes all pictures in the gallery
- One of the most innovative features is auto image rotation. Gallery can look up at information in pictures from digital cameras and automatically rotate them as needed.
- With RSS publishing users can publish Gallery with RSS
- Lots of customization options, CSS modification, elegant themes, html_wrap for including content and changing code. More themes to be downloaded
- It can be embedded into several different content management systems.
Cons
Cannot protect the original size of pictures
2. 4Image Gallery
It’s an image Gallery Software/ Photo Gallery Software written in .NET for storing and displaying multimedia galleries of images, pictures and other files. Image Gallery Pro is a multi-user application where each member can create unlimited number of galleries. It’s a extremely versatile web-based image gallery management program. Some of its key features include comment system, user registration and management password protected administrative area. Further it offers HTML templates for page layout and design. 4Image Gallery offers integrated template application that allows easy customization of design and layout. It uses a MySQL database to hold the information for the pictures, such as the discription, link to larger image, and the URL to the thumbnail itself. 4Image Gallery is pre-configured various popular image and file formats that include jpg, gif, png, aif, au, avi, mid, mov, mp3, mpg, swf, wav, ra, rm, zip, pdf.
Pros
- Unlimited categories/subcategories
- It features an eCards could be delivered directly in the email messages or retrieved using a link sent in an email
- eCard software for sending images/files as an eCard
- auto-thumbnails
- Extensive administration panel
Cons
- Consumes lot of time for entering all the required fields for the program that makes it difficult to add pictures and galleries at one time.
4Image Gallery could be a great option for those looking use it for a weekly gallery of images.
3. Plogger
For a simple and powerful image gallery Plogger could be a great choice. It’s key features include XML feeds, custom themes, and automatic thumbnail generation. For a simple and powerful image gallery, there could be no alternatives for Plogger. It’s an open-source photo gallery software that can be easily integrated into the website. This web application is not bloated with superfluous features or intricate configuration. In addition, Plogger also offers an attractive photo sharing package with an administrative interface that makes it completely easy to manage the galleries. Some of it’s other features include XML feeds, custom themes, and automatic thumbnail generation. Ploggers works on servers supporting MySQL 3.23, GD Graphics Library 1.0, and PHP 4.
Pros
- Simple and intuitive user administrative interface
- Built-in XML generator for Plogger gallery
- Edit descriptions and captions for any picture with AJAX inline-editing on-the-fly with our slick AJAX inline editors.
- Easily include Plogger from any directory or page on website
- Allows automatic Thimbnail generation
- Integrated javascript Slideshoew allowing you to view albums as hands-free JavaScript slideshow
Cons
- No plugins availave available
- Low security no spam filter
4. Zenphoto
Zenphoto allows you to upload images, videos, mp3s or even zip-archives via the admin interface or even albums (folders) directly via FTP. It allows multiple image uploads via JavaScript. It automatically generates thumbnails and enables custom crops. An interesting feature in Zenphoto is that it allows AJAX powered edit-you browser. Zenphoto offers RSS for gallery, albums and comments. Media formats supported by Zenphoto include JPEG, GIF, PNG, (.flv), MPEG4 (.mp4), (.mov), 3GP (.3gp). The image gallery offers some handy plugins like CMS plugin Zenpage for managing an entire site with custom pages and news section. Some of the other plugins include image and album rating, Google maps, FLV player and Flowplayer 3.
Pros
- Dynamic albums - generates albums for searches
- highly customizable with predefined themes
- Flexibility to meet personal needs with
- EXIF and IPTC support for images
- Spam filter options - Akismet, CAPTCHA, SpamAssassin etc
- Watermarks
Cons
- It’s doesn’t protect original sizes of images (except with a watermark)
- XHTML, CSS, PHP knowledge required for customization
5. Shadowbox
Popularly known as an online media viewer application. The image scripts allows developers the ability to link to images, flash, video, text, websites, and other media content without having to make the visitor leave the page. It can be found in all modern browsers and is backed by a fairly good community support. Well, what’s most interesting is that if a client doesn’t have JavaScript enabled it must stay out of the way.
Pros
- Use of HTML markup that validates and no phony HTML attributes in the anchor tags to make it work.
- Unique ability to adapt to different JavaScript framework and even run as as a standalone application
- Host of customization options
- Smart plugin detection mechanism to avoid confusion over torn image or puzzle piece icons, especially when they don’t have the plugins they need to view your content.
- Flexibility to support most popular media publishing formats including images, QuickTime, Windows Media Player, Flash, Flash video, HTML, and even external web pages.
Cons
- Problem with large image Media handling
- Views gallery field format gives no output
6. Coppermine
It’s a multi-purpose fully-featured and integrated web picture gallery script written in PHP. Coppermine is a multi-purpose fully-featured and integrated web picture gallery script written in PHP. It’s a web-based application with multimedia capabilities. The photo gallery requires MySQL, and ImageMagick or the GD Graphics Library. Basically it allows users to upload images, user comments, and multi picture uploads. It offers full multimedia support and multi-pic upload. It allows creation of thumbnails and intermediate size pics. Coppermine features user management (private galleries, groups) and integrates it with various bbs (like phpBB, YaBB SE, SMF, Invisionboard, vbulleti. n). It offers caption, title, description and user defined fields for each picture.
Pros
- image rotation
- all features customizable with web interface (admin section)
- template system
- user membership in multiple groups
- upload approval notice for admin
- EXIF/IPTC support
- automatic thumbnail creation
Cons
Coppermine critical error, unable to connect to database
Link
7. Simple Picture Gallery Maker
As its name suggests, SPGM is a simple and easy to use gallery. Although it is lightweight, simple and portable, but includes all the basic features. SPGM is an answer to lots of online gallery solutions that makes perfect sense. It is easily configurable and the layout can be customized to match the design.
Pros
- Unlimited sub-galleries
- per gallery complete configuration
- Random/fixed thumbnails used for gallery previews
- new pictures highlighting
- Hidden galleries
- EXIF support
Cons
- No automatic thumbnail generation
- Lacks advanced search functions
- No per-gallery full statistics
8. Image Gallery Pro
It’s an image Gallery Software/ Photo Gallery Software written in .NET for storing and displaying multimedia galleries of images, pictures and other files. Image Gallery Pro is a multi-user application where each member can create unlimited number of galleries. It features an eCard software for sending images/files as an eCard. eCards could be delivered directly in the email messages or retrieved using a link sent in an email. The software has membership option in order to gain access to a gallery. The members are organized into Membership Types and offers limited ecard sending capabilities. It has a built-in image browser and image upload tool greatly simplifies uploading files. Just browse and find the file on your computer and Image Gallery Pro would automatically upload it to your site. The images/files can be rated and commented on as well as viewed as a slide show. It allows full customization using cool Templates, Header, Footer, Style Sheets and Javascript.
Pros
- Intuitive HTML administration interface
- Written in powerful .NET platform
- Supports multiple users
- Support for unlimited number of galleries each having unlimited categories and sub-categories
- Thumbnail images are automatically created from the full-size image
- Uses search engine friendly URL’s to make indexing by search engines faster
Cons
No support for Flash and XML
9. (E) 2 Photo Gallery
It’s a light-weight gallery script developed in Javascript and PHP. It uploads images to a folder, defines the folder in the script and pull images from that folder dynamically. What’s more the javascript effects and pre-loader lends it a beautiful face.
- Smoother image transitions
- Options for quick change between 4 design
- Automatic Photo Detection
- Automatic Adjustment to Image Sizes
- Reads in Photo Meta Data (IPTC Info)
Cons
Issues with browsers - IE 7 and Google Chrome. If you look at the Gallery in IE7 and then pull up the photo info it cuts off the bar.
10. BolGallery
If you are looking for a gallery to pile up jpeg’s into a folder, and send someone a link, BolGallery is the right pick. There are several instances where this could be a perfect tool. It’s integration is simple and easy. It’s great for times when you just need to show someone images quickly.
Pros
- Simple and easy integration with your site design
- Automatic static page system
- Well documented
- One-click-close popup
- Doesn’t require MySQL
Cons
- Difficult to create thumbnail images
- Thumbnail appearance doesn’t change
Tags: Image gallery software, Web application
December 17, 2009: 3:08 pm
Great list, but I’m gonna have to add xFlow! in there. xflow.pwhitrow.com xFlow! is a gallery application that has been built to answer the internet’s demand for a fully functional Coverflow style gallery. Written in PHP and Javascript, it’s a breeze to setup and administer, and boasts a wealth of features. |
Paul Whitrow