Top 21 Favorite Self-hosted Photo Collection and Web-based Galleries [2024 Updated]

If you are a photographer (a pro of a hobby photographer like me) and want to make a portfolio for your work, you will look for a fast and effective way.

Most likely, you have an account at some websites like Flicker, DeviantArt, and even Instagram. These services are free, unlimited, and comes without any technical requirement.

But, what if you want to create your custom portfolio website to showcase your work. Then you will need self-hosted web-based software.

So, here in this article, we will provide you with all options hoping to choose the right one for your work.

Top 21 favorite Self-hosted Photo Collection programs [2021]

1- Photoprism

Photoprism is a decentralized alternative to Flickr, YouTube, SoundCloud, and other online media distribution platforms. Its life began in 2008 when a gathering was held at the Free Software Foundation to discuss the path that Internet communities should take.

Photoprism highlights

1. Full-text and metatag search
2. Highly customizable
3. Modular
4. Developer-friendly

Create your own private Google Photo alternative with PhotoPrism

If you are a professional or a hobby photographer, certainly you are using Google Photos or similar services to back up, organize and share your photo collections. Many open-source tools and self-hosted solutions can help you to achieve that, but today, we bring you the best there is: PhotoPrism. L…

MEDevel.comHamza Mousa

2- Lychee

Lychee is a web-based photo management tool that was released under the MIT license, with many fancy features. The distribution runs on your server or webspace.

It is perfect for photographers to store all their photos with no storage limit. Import photos from many other websources source is seamless and fast.

Lychee highlights

• Self-hosted
• Easy to use
• Open source
• Fast
• Having a control way to protect your photo
• Having a full screen mode to look at all your photo
• Having a beautiful stunning interface
• Better accessibility support
• Secure
• It supports EXIF and IPTC Metadata
• It makes sharing photos very easy

Lychee — Self-hosted photo-management done right

Lychee is a free photo-management tool, which runs on your server or web-space. Upload, manage and share photos like from a native application. Lychee comes with everything you need and all your photos are stored securely.

3- Piwigo

This software is a manager for photo collections for the web. It is designed for organizations, teams, and individuals and is written in PHP.

While it works like charm, and it is very customizable, its source code on GitHub and free to use

Released under the GPL v2 license.

Piwigo Highlight

• Self-hosted
• Open source
• Mobile-friendly design
• Organize with Album
• Upload your photos
• Privacy on your Photos
• Browse by Dates
• Coming with Themes
• Coming with Plugins
• Full-screen slideshow
• Easy installation and updates
• Import automatic your metadata

Piwigo - Open source photo management software

Manage your photo library with Piwigo! Free and open source software to organize and share your photos and digital media on the web.

Piwigo.org

4- Jellyfin

Jellyfin is a community-based software media system for personal usage. It enables you to collect, manage, and stream your media.

It is a .NET Core framework written in C# Released under the GNU GPL, Jellyfin offers no tracking, phone-home, or central servers collecting all your data.

Jellyfin Highlight

• Open software
• Transparent
• Import automatic your metadata
• Free
• Cross-platform support

The Free Software Media System | Jellyfin

The volunteer-built media solution that puts you in control of your media. Stream to any device from your own server, with no strings attached.

Jellyfin Logo

5- Coppermine

Coppermine is an integrated web picture gallery script written in PHP and used MySQL as a backend, which is why it works on Windows, macOS, and Linux without extra needed tools or libraries.

Coppermine offers a modern responsive user interface that works with all modern desktop, table and mobile browsers.

It also comes with many features that made it the preferred solution for professional photographers for more than a decade.

The project is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.

Coppermine Highlights

• Open software
• Free
• Arrangement of pictures in categories and albums
• Picture information stored in a database
• Users can upload pictures with the web interface or FTP
• Search feature
• Last added
• Random picture
• User management (private galleries, groups)
• Integration of user management
• Easy install
• Multilingual
• E-card feature
• Slideshow viewer

Coppermine Photo Gallery

Coppermine Photo Gallery has 4 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

GitHub

6- LibrePhotos (OwnPhoto)

LibrePhotos is a photo management service licensed under the MIT license written with python and runs on Windows, Linux, macOS.

It's a self-hosted open-source with a beautiful interface that used React for the frontend and Django for the backend.

It is designed to manage and discover your photos, easily get information about your photos.

LibrePhoto highlights

• Support all types of photos, including raw photos
• Support for videos
• Timeline view
• Scan pictures on the file system
• Multiuser support
• Generate albums based on events like "Thursday in Berlin"
• Face recognition / Face classification
• Reverse geocoding
• Object / Scene detection
• Semantic image search
• Search by metadata

GitHub - LibrePhotos/librephotos: A self-hosted open source photo management service. This is the repository of the backend.

A self-hosted open source photo management service. This is the repository of the backend. - GitHub - LibrePhotos/librephotos: A self-hosted open source photo management service. This is the reposi…

GitHubLibrePhotos

7- MediaGoblin

MediaGoblin was part of the GNU project that is a perfect tool to show and share your media. It is a free software platform that is easy to use by anyone.

It is a good alternative for Filker, YouTube, and the sound cloud.

MediaGoblin used for more than is released under the GNU AGPLv3, written in python.

MediaGoblin Features

• Decentralization project
• Extensible
• Support multiple media types
• Support video
• Free
• Open source
• easy to use

MediaGoblin

MediaGoblin logo

8- Photo Stream

Photo Stream is yet another simple self-hosted photostream which released under the MIT license.

It is aimed to own your photos and how they are represented across social media, and it has a beautiful interface, but it is still maintained and under active development.

Photo Stream Features

• Lazy loading support
• Only load larger resolutions when needed (to save on bandwidth)
• Photo tints
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Unique URL's for photos
• RSS feed
• Drag, drop,
• Commit workflow
• Easy to use
• Self-hosted
• No tracking
• Optimized light and dark themes
• Optional: Links to your social networks

GitHub - waschinski/photo-stream: Self-hosted, super simple photo stream

Self-hosted, super simple photo stream. Contribute to waschinski/photo-stream development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubwaschinski

9- Uber Gallery

Uber Gallery is an open-source web photo gallery written with PHP and published under the MIT license.

Uber Gallery offers an easy-to-use UI, automatic thumbnail generation, database-less configuration, and more.

Uber Gallery highlights

• Easy to use
• Simple to manage
• Does not require a database
• Supports JPEG, GIF, and PNG file types
• Upload images
• Automatically generate thumbnails
• Simple installation
• Database-less configuration
• Create multiple galleries with a single installation

GitHub - UberGallery/UberGallery: An easy to use, simple to manage, web photo gallery written in PHP.

An easy to use, simple to manage, web photo gallery written in PHP. - GitHub - UberGallery/UberGallery: An easy to use, simple to manage, web photo gallery written in PHP.

GitHubUberGallery

10- ZenPhoto

ZenPhoto is a simpler CMS platform that releases under GPL v2 and is written with PHP. It comes with many pro and custom features for all sort of image files.

ZenPhoto is used by multimedia personal websites, artists, designers, photographers, filmmakers, and musicians.

ZenPhoto Features

• Free
• Open-source
• Support for various media formats
• Integrated blog
• Custom pages.
• Easy Media website management
• Manage image, video, and audio files
• Multi-user management
• International sites with multiple languages
• Easy to use

ZenphotoCMS - The simpler media website CMS

ZenphotoCMS is a CMS for selfhosted, gallery focused websites. Our focus lies on being easy to use and having all the features there when you need them (but out

ZenphotoThe Zenphoto team and contributors

11- Sigal

Sigal is another gallery generator that gives you the ability to build a static gallery of images. It is written in Python and works with Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Released under the MIT license, Sigal offers an easy-to-use interface and modern that is beneficial for most use cases.

Sigal highlights

• Process directories recursively.
• Generate HTML pages using Jinja2 templates.
• Relative links for a portable output.
• Support themes, videos, EXIF tags, zip download.
• Parallel processing.
• MIT licensed.
• Easy to use

GitHub - saimn/sigal: yet another simple static gallery generator

yet another simple static gallery generator. Contribute to saimn/sigal development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubsaimn

12- PicApport

Picapport is one of the self-hosted photo servers to manage photos and share them with users for saving photo purposes.

It has an easy user interface which makes photo management a hassle-free task, and besides being free, it supports many features for different question types that may wish to use.

The app is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License.

Picapport Features

• Share
• Tag
• Photos fully automatically with the integrated AI
• Edit metadata
• Fast
• Manage Metadata
• Share photos
• Digital photo frame
• Local Collections
• Support RAW images and Plugins
• Private
• Bookmarks
• Self-hosted photo gallery

PicApport | The self-hosted private photo server with photo gallery and photo management

The free software for photo management. Easily manage photos and videos, and provide them locally in your WLAN or internet from your server.

The self-hosted private photo server with photo gallery and photo managementJoannis Nastas Contecon Software GmbH /

13- Robroy

Robroy is an open-source photo gallery. It is written in vanilla JavaScript and vanilla PHP photo gallery and comes without a database.

It is released as an open-source under the MIT license.

Robroy Features

• Read from the file system
• Authentication through HTTP basic auth
• Upload image
• Delete image
• Automatically creates thumbnails
• Automatically resizes images
• Automatically watermarks images
• Loads images with infinite scroll

Robroy is no longer available

14- Photoview

Photoview is a web-based gallery app is for personal use. It is a self-hosted server based on the file structure.

The software is written in typescript and go languages.

The purpose of it is to provide an easy and fast way to navigate directories from high-resolution photos.

Photoview Highlights

• The media is automatically organized
• Multiple users
• Support Maps
• RAW Support
• Video Support
• Performant
• Private
• EXIF Metadata
• Runs on ARM
• Secure
• Free and Open-Source
• Syncs with file system
• Simple and user-friendly

Photoview

Photoview is a simple and user-friendly Photo Gallery for self-hosted personal servers. It is made for photographers and aims to provide an easy and fast way to navigate directories, with thousands of high resolution photos.

15- Chevereto

Chevereto is a self-hosted image hosting website mainly built as a personal photo portfolio and Digital Asset Manager.

The software is released under the AGPL-3.0 license. It is written in PHP and works with Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Chevereto Features

• Free
• Customizable
• Configurable image hosting
• Easy to get started
• Always updated
• User accounts
• Albums management
• Admin dashboard
• Desktop uploader
• Multiple storage servers
• Multi-language
• Google Cloud
• Own API

Chevereto - Image Hosting Software

Image hosting and sharing software that allows you to get your own image hosting service. It’s your hosting and your rules, say goodbye to the closures and restrictions.

Image Hosting SoftwareRodolfo Berrios

16- Photato

Photato is yet nother personal pictures self-hosted gallery is accessible through a responsive WebUI.

It is used the file system hierarchy technic to save the picture in it. It is running on Windows, Linux distributions(Ubuntu/Debian), and you can run it with docker.

It is released under the AGPL-3.0 License and written with java.

Photato Features

• Folders \ picture gallery
• Responsive design
• Realtime indexing
• XMP file support
• Edit picture
• Upload of pictures
• Automated offline keywords annotations

GitHub - prembasumatary/Photato: Photato - The personal Pictures gallery

Photato - The personal Pictures gallery. Contribute to prembasumatary/Photato development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubprembasumatary

17- PhotoFloat

PhotoFloat a web photo gallery platform aims to keep the process of saving photos fast as well as be.

It uses a Python script and a JavaScript application.

PhotoFloat is Licensed and Released under the GNU General Public V2 License.

PhotoFloat Features

• Open source
• Lightweight
• Animations support
• Album view
• Photo view
• Photo pre-loading support
• Smooth up and downscaling
• Support Mouse-wheel
• Metadata display
• Consistent hash URL format
• Support Optional server-side authentication
• Optional Google Analytics integration
• Facebook meta tags for thumbnail and post type

PhotoFloat - A Web 2.0 photo gallery done right via static JSON and dynamic JavaScript with no server-side burden but optional server-side SEO engine. Fast. Minimal.

cgit logo

18- Photonix

Photonix is an open-source web-based app used to manage photo albums. It is used by many professional photographers worldwide.

It uses AGPL-3.0 license and written with Python.

Photonix Features

• Re-discovering photos
• Smart filtering
• Downloading photos from your camera
• Editing and saving
• Face recognition
• Object detection
• Location-awareness
• Color analysis
• Associated RAW files
• Image organizer
• Image viewer
• Multiple users

Photonix Photo Manager

Photonix is a photo management application that solves a lot of problems. Once set up it will ingest all the photos in your collection and start building up an image database of everything you could want to search and filter by. It makes your entire collection available to you, whichever device you’…

Photonix Photo Manager

19- PiGallery2

PiGallery is a web-based photo album organizer. It offers databaseless mode but can work also with SQLite and MySQL databases too.

PiGallery Features

• Photo viewer
• Map and geotagging support
• Advanced searching
• Sharing
• Easy settings
• Video playback
• Random link
• support videos
• Rendering directories
• thumbnail generation in several sizes
• Custom lightbox
• Client-side caching

PiGallery 2

PiGallery 2

GitHub - bpatrik/pigallery2: A fast directory-first photo gallery website, with rich UI, optimized for running on low resource servers (especially on raspberry pi)

A fast directory-first photo gallery website, with rich UI, optimized for running on low resource servers (especially on raspberry pi) - GitHub - bpatrik/pigallery2: A fast directory-first photo g…

GitHubbpatrik

20- Hugo Split Gallery Theme

Hugo is an open-source photo gallery application that was released under the GPLv3 license. It is focused on photos and maps. It supports a custom section and taxonomizes.

Hugo Split Gallery

Hugo Split Gallery | Demo Split Gallery is a theme for Hugo focused on photos and maps. This Hugo theme features a photo gallery, a map and custom content per page, and supports custom sections and taxonomies. This project is licensed under the GPLv3 license. Due to 3rd-party included in this projec…

News

21- PhotoLight

PhotoLight is a lightweight PHP-based web album management solution. It is useful if you want to use a simple solution without many configurations.

However, it did not get any update since 2013.

GitHub - thibaud-rohmer/PhotoLight: The easiest photo gallery there is.

The easiest photo gallery there is. . Contribute to thibaud-rohmer/PhotoLight development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubthibaud-rohmer

Conclusion

So we have seen in this list many self-hosted software programs that are more than enough to be a photo gallery apps. Some of them aim for professional and hobby photographers and others aim for personal use.

So, choose carefully what is the best for your workflow requirements.