I’ve been asked many times for my recommendations for the best software to use to create image galleries. As with so many other questions there is no simple answer, it depends on what you want, and how easy you want to make it for yourself.

Static galleries

These are the quickest and easiest to create, and the product that stands out for me is Jalbum. This package is being continually updated and improved, but is still easy to learn and produces great results.

Dynamic galleries

Because these tend to produce a more sophisticated gallery, typically with features such as slideshows, searching, EXIF display, and e-cards they are by their very nature more difficult to implement and require more than just basic features. I’ll recommend Gallery, with Coppermine as a worthy runner-up. I like Gallery for its long pedigree, range of features, excellent support, and general look-and-feel. Coppermine is not dissimilar to Gallery, and it has the bonus of a built-in e-card facility.

Gallery Hosts

Grove Street is neat, Flickr is slicker.

Content management system galleries

Undoubtedly the most complex galleries to set up. Not only are there all the configuration difficulties of what is usually a sophisticated dynamic gallery, this has to be integrated into the administration and themes of a content management system. My recommendation is Drupal in combination with Gallery2. It is standard, free-downloadable Gallery2 that is integrated by means of the Drupal "Gallery" module. This works pretty well considering the complexity of both products, though there are some caveats, for example getting clean URLs to work across both products is challenging (or impossible according to some), and doing anything adventurous with themes is fraught with difficulties.

Photo organisers

There are two competing organisers for my recommendation. The good news is that both offer similar facilities, and they are both free. It is quite possible to download Picasa and Adobe Photo Album Starter Edition and compare and contrast by running them simultaneously. There really is not much in it - both do a fine job of organising images on a PC, and they both have a number of other useful features, such as a basic photo editor. I’d suggest that you use the one whose look and feel suits you best.