Do you feel like you are drowning in digital photos? It seems that the phone itself is filled with your selfies and pictures, but choosing the best shots and organizing photos never happens without your intervention. It takes time to organize the memories you create, but structured photo albums are so enjoyable to work with. Your phone's operating system probably has a service for storing and sorting photos, but there is a fair share of privacy concerns around knowingly providing copies of photos of your life, friends, children, and vacations to corporations (also for free). Fortunately, there is a large selection of open source alternatives where you can choose who can view your photos, as well as open source tools.to help you find and enhance the very best of your favorite photos.
Nextcloud
Nextcloud is more than a photo posting app, it stands out for its photo management thanks to phone apps that you can use to sync non-automatic selections. Instead of uploading your photos to Google Photos or Apple's cloud storage, you can upload them to your personal Nextcloud installation.
Nextcloud is surprisingly easy to set up, and with strict controls, you can choose who's online to access your albums. You can also buy Nextclould hosting - you may think that it is no different from Google or Apple, but the difference is significant: the Nextcloud storage is clearly encrypted, the source code is proof of that.
Piwigo
Piwigo is an open source photo gallery program written in PHP with a large community of users and developers, featuring a number of customizable features, themes and an embeddable interface. Piwigo has been on the market for over 17 years, which cannot be said about the relatively new cloud storage used by default on phones. There's also a mobile app so you can sync everything.
Viewing images
Storing photos is only half the battle. Giving meaning to them is quite another matter, and for that you need a good set of open source tools. And the best tool depends a lot on what you really need. Almost everyone is an amateur photographer, even if they don't perceive themselves that way, and some even make a living doing it. Here everyone will find something to their liking, and at the very least, you need a pleasant and efficient way to browse your photo gallery.
Both Nextcloud and Piwigo have excellent built-in viewers, however some users prefer a dedicated app over a web browser. A well-designed image viewer is great for quickly viewing multiple photos without wasting time downloading them or even without an internet connection.
- Eye of GNOME – Linux – .
- ImageGlass – , , Windows.
- PhotoQt – Windows Linux, Qt, , .
The main function of Google Photos and similar services is the ability to organize photos by metadata. The flat structure does not crop a few hundred photos in your collection; after a few thousand it is simply impossible. Of course, using metadata to organize a library doesn't always promise perfect results, so having a good organizer is invaluable. Below are several open source tools for automatic catalog organization, you can also take direct part and set filters so that the photos are sorted as you wish.
- Shotwell – , GNOME. – , , .
- Gwenview – KDE. , , , , .
- DigiKam – , KDE, , . , Windows Linux.
- Lightzone – . Java, , Java (Linux, MacOS, Windows, BSD ).
- Darktable is a photo studio, digital darkroom and photo manager all in one. You can directly link your camera to it, or synchronize images, sort them according to your favorites, enhance photos with dynamic filters and export the result. This is a professional app and may not be for the hobbyist, but if you enjoy pondering apertures and shutter speeds or debating Tri-X grains, Darktable is perfect for you.
Tell about yourself? Have you used Google Photos and are looking for a new way to manage your photos? Or have you already moved on to something newer, and hopefully open source? Of course, we have not listed all the options, so tell us about your favorites below in the comments.
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