There are many web services that allow users to upload pictures to a hosting site. The image host stores the images on its servers, and shows the individual different types of code to allow others to view that image. Popular examples include Flickr, Instagram, Imgur, Photobucket, SmugMug and Snapfish.
Most of these solutions provide free storage space, with more features available if you are willing to pay for a premium account. However, there are problems with these solutions. Leaving aside privacy and ownership issues, these services typically do not provide good integration with other platforms. There is a simple alternative which gives you more control and flexibility – self-hosted open source gallery software.
Anyone with a large photo collection will know that cataloging and finding a specific picture can be very time consuming. The purpose of this article is to identify Linux software that helps to host, organize, describe and share your collection by using a number of different techniques including tagging and albums. Good software makes the task of deciding which photos to keep and which to delete less time consuming.
To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 12 of the most useful open source web photo gallery software. Hopefully, there will be something of interest here for anyone who wants to host and share their photos.
We give our strongest recommendation to PhotoPrism, Piwigo, Immich, Photoview, and LibrePhotos but each of the solutions has something to offer. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion.
Let’s explore the 12 photo gallery solutions at hand. Click the links in the table below to learn more about each solution. For some of them, we’ve written a detailed review.
| Web Photo Gallery | |
|---|---|
| PhotoPrism | AI-powered photos app for the decentralized web |
| Piwigo | An excellent solution for hosting and sharing your photos |
| Immich | Simple to use backup tool for self-hosted photos and videos |
| Photoview | Simple and user-friendly photo gallery that’s made for photographers |
| LibrePhotos | Self-hosted photo management service |
| Coppermine | Feature-rich and integrated, web picture gallery script |
| Zenphoto | Mature, standalone Content Management System |
| MediaGoblin | Decentralized Web platform for hosting and sharing digital media |
| Lychee | Attractive and easy-to-use photo management system |
| HomeGallery | Featuring tagging, mobile-friendly, and AI powered image discovery |
| Lutim | Let’s Upload That Image |
| fgallery | Static photo gallery generator with no frills that has a stylish, minimalist look |
This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |
I can recommend PicApport. It’s really missing in the List.
Can you give me an honest assessment of PicApport capabilities? Looking for a server based photo organizational tool for the municipality I work for. Thanks!
Picapport is very very simple to set up, which is great, no messing around with setting up a webserver first. It works pretty good in places, but not so good in others. Spaces in Directory names can be a problem (the folder “Cat” and “Cat Babies” will be displayed within each other. Some Characters in Tags dont work properly [] for example, png files only work via a (very easy to install) plugin, this however creates hidden .jpg files for every png file which can be anoying if you use your photo directories with other programms aswell.
Appart from that im very happy with it. I have tried a lot of solutions, none is free of such little Problems. Picapport won it for me because its easy to install and i can work around its weak spots.
It’s not eligible for inclusion here as it’s not open source software.
This is really an amazing guide, thanks for sharing.
Would Photoprism qualify to be in this list ? I just read your review about it.
This roundup has been updated.
Yes, PhotoPrism is open source software. And it’s the winner!
Any reason why Immich was left out of the comparison? MIT License, 12.8K Stars with updates/features being rolling out sometimes as often as twice a week. I know it’s “newer”, but come on…
Probably because we depend on the community letting us know about projects.
We will take a look at Immich. GitHub stars mean diddly squat btw. Project statements like “Do not use the app as the only way to store your photos and videos!” don’t inspire confidence.
Absolutely. We are just a few open source enthusiasts writing about software we know about.
No doubt there are quite a few good other open source photo gallery solutions.
Understandable. I love open-source and can get behind those who make it easier for others to find and use. Keep up the good work.
I agree that stars “mean diddly squat” when it comes to how good something is, but it does show that there is an interest in the project.
A quick Google search for “self-hosted photos” nets results for Immich. Even the experimental Google Generative AI hits on Immich… Anyway, on behalf of the community, please accept my apologies for not letting you know.
Your logic on confidence does have me a bit stumped. Is your confidence uninspired because they put that disclaimer right on the front of their Github page or is it because they didn’t bury it inside of a “Terms of Service” document like some of the other projects?
Look, I have no vested interest in any of these groups. I’m just a self-host hobbyist who’s checked out a lot of open-source projects, so I’m not sure where the attitude is coming from. A simple, “Hey, we missed that one… We’ll look into it… blah, blah, blah.” would have been sufficient.
I did say we will look into it.
DocDrydenn, you are the one coming across as having the bad attitude.
It’s easy to fake GitHub stars. And I know a few open source projects that have been caught out doing this.
The reverse can happen where a project innocently loses all its GitHub stars because of the braindead GitHub implementation. HTTPie lost 54k stars when they accidentally made their project’s repository private for a moment.
Yeah, there are ‘services’ that charge around $70 for 1000 GitHub stars.
There are even fake GitHub account generator tools hosted in GitHub repositories. The irony :>
The problem here is these are all oriented for running from a web server. I’m looking for a utility that can generate local albums that can then be copied to CD. Booh used to be my go-to for this, but that has gone missing.
This is a roundup for web-based solutions.
Take a look at https://www.linuxlinks.com/best-free-open-source-software-graphics/ which has non-web based software.