Publishing your photos

(Credit: Gallery Project)

Taking digital pictures is simple; transforming them into a constructive project is a whole 'nother story. Web services like Flickr, Picasa, Shutterfly, Webshots, Snapfish, and countless others let you create photo galleries that are hosted on their servers, but what if you want to create a gallery for your own Web site?

Personally, I'm the sort of guy who wants to start with my raw images and my trusty NoteTab Light text editor, but I seem to have lost my patience for HTML and CSS (not to mention JavaScript and XML) over the last five years.

JAlbum provides a simple interface for creating your own gallery.

(Credit: JAlbum)

For quick and easy photo galleries, a longtime staff favorite has been JAlbum, free software that includes a variety of decent templates with a built-in FTP for uploading your images. An excellent shareware option is Album Creator Pro, which includes a large set of templates and allows users with HTML/XML experience to quickly create their own templates.

The open-source, Web-based photo organizer Gallery is another powerful, free option for amateurs looking to display their photo galleries. Gallery is a PHP-based solution, so you'll need to have knowledge of Web servers and databases, but the amount of customization I've found so far is very impressive.

What do you use to publish your own photo galleries online? Tell me about it in the comments.