Gallery vs Photonic Gallery & Lightbox for Flickr, SmugMug & Others

Photo & Image Gallery FooGallery makes it easy to create stunning photo and image galleries using drag and drop in minutes. It’s responsive, retina-ready, SEO-friendly, and optimized for performance. With beautiful gallery layouts, live gallery previews, a built-in lightbox, and deep customization options, FooGallery is a complete gallery solution for modern WordPress websites. Launch Your Own FooGallery Demo (Backend included) FooGallery gives you live previews as you design your galleries, includes a visual gallery layout selector, and integrates seamlessly with the WordPress block editor and shortcodes. It’s developer-friendly, performance-focused, and fully extendable. Visit the FooGallery Homepage All FooGallery Demos Key Features 7 Beautiful Free Gallery layouts: Responsive Gallery – demo Image Viewer Gallery – demo Masonry Gallery – demo Portfolio Gallery – demo Justified Gallery – demo Single Thumbnail Gallery – demo Carousel – demo Built-in Lightbox: Adjust colors, transitions, captions, and controls with fullscreen, thumb strip, auto progress, prev/next, and download button support. Advanced Customization: Control thumbnail sizes, spacing, hover effects, caption line limits, mobile columns, background fill, custom attributes, and more. Visual Gallery Builder: Use the gallery layout selector, live preview device switcher, drag-and-drop uploads, advanced attachment modal, and shortcode helpers to build galleries faster. Block Editor & Shortcodes: Add galleries with the WordPress block editor, preview them live while editing, and fine-tune output with shortcode arguments and page/offset controls. Performance Optimized: Lazy loading, pagination, reduced layout shifts, fingerprinted assets, and broad compatibility with image optimization and caching plugins for fast loading times. SEO-Ready: ALT and title attributes, attachment descriptions, and full integration with Yoast, Rank Math, and AIOSEO. Albums built-in: Responsive album layout – demo All-in-one Stack album – demo (just activate the albums feature) Import / Export galleries between WP installs, with progress and resume support for large imports – docs Drag n Drop reordering of images and galleries Drag n Drop images into gallery to upload into gallery (and media library) Custom CSS for both galleries and albums One-click gallery page creation FooGallery Migrator – easily migrate from Envira / NextGen / Modula Multisite Support Password protected image galleries PRO Features FooGallery PRO adds professional-level features and integrations for photographers, agencies, and eCommerce users. PRO Starter Plan Our PRO Starter plan is our most affordable plan and includes features that take your WordPress galleries to the next level! PRO Starter is mostly for photographers or website owners that want better-looking galleries and lightboxes. View PRO Starter Details 4 additional gallery layouts: Polaroid – demo Grid – demo Slider – demo Spotlight – demo 11 hover effect presets – demo 12 CSS thumbnail effects (Instagram-style) – demo Colors and color sorting: Extract dominant colors from images, sort galleries by color, and apply opaque or tinted backgrounds for a more art-directed look. PRO Expert Plan Our PRO Expert plan unlocks exactly what you would expect – expert-level features! Our most popular plan is for professional photographers and website owners who want to invest in how their galleries look and work. View PRO Expert Details Video Galleries: Import from YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Vimeo, or self-hosted sources demos Filtering & Tagging: Filter by Media Tags or Categories with multi-level filtering, search, dropdown filter styles, and advanced selection modes demos Dynamic Galleries: Load images from folders, Lightroom, Real Media Library, Infinite Uploads, or posts, with support for ACF fields and richer post query controls. demos Advanced Pagination: Load More, Infinite Scroll, and Numbered pagination demos Advanced Custom Captions Create captions using placeholders & custom HTML demos EXIF metadata Showcase your photo metadata in the Lightbox demo Media Category Folders Browse and work with media category folders directly inside the attachment modal. Bulk Copy Easily copy gallery settings to other galleries more info ImageGallery SEO Schema Output opt-in ImageGallery JSON-LD schema for pages that use FooGallery, with per-gallery schema overrides for richer image discovery. PRO Commerce Features Our PRO Commerce plan is for the photographers who make a living from selling their photos online. We have integrated with WooCommerce, to bring you innovative tools to help you sell more with hardly any effort. View PRO Commerce Details WooCommerce integration: Sell your photos or create dynamic product galleries with sorting, filtering, ratings, stock status controls, and deeper WooCommerce integration. more info Image Protection: Watermarking and no right-click options demo Master Product Setup: No more separate products for each image – link all your photos to a single master product. Supports variations, file downloads, WooCommerce blocks, and guided product setup tools. Buttons and Ribbons Add custom buttons, download buttons, styled call-to-actions, and attention-grabbing ribbons to your images. demo Product Info in Lightbox Show product details, price, stock messaging, add-to-cart, checkout, view product, and download actions directly in the lightbox. Gallery Blueprints Create Gallery Templates that share settings across galleries for faster gallery management – docs PRO Addons We also have a collection of powerful add-ons available to enhance your gallery experience. All the Addons work with the FREE version too! User Uploads Addon: Allow visitors to upload images & videos into galleries. Includes image moderation, form field customization, email notifications and more. more info Social Addon: Increase visitor engagement by allowing them to like, comment and share images in your galleries. more info Whitelabel: Allow power users to rename or rebrand “FooGallery”, modify the shortcode, menu, and disable features. more info Client Proofing: Create a private proofing page where your clients can select or reject images in the galleries. (Coming soon!) 3D Splat Viewer: Create emmersive 3D walk-throughs for showcasing products or real-estate. (Coming soon!) See More Demos How to Create a Photo Gallery in WordPress Install and activate FooGallery from the Plugins menu. Click Add Gallery and choose your layout. Upload or select images from your Media Library. Customize captions, hover effects, and lightbox settings. Publish and embed your gallery using a block or shortcode. Integrations and Compatibility Works seamlessly in the Block Editor / Gutenberg. WooCommerce integration to sell photos online. Lightbox plugins : FooBox, dFactory. Page builders : Elementor. SEO Plugins: Yoast, Rank Math, AIOSEO. Caching Plugins: WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, WPOptimize. Media Tools: ShortPixel, Imagify, Real Media Library, and Infinite Uploads. Others : Jetpack, Polylang. Documentation FooGallery Documentation

Photonic takes the WordPress gallery and super-charges it with a lot of added functionality. It adds support for several new sources and parameters to enhance the content and look-and-feel of your galleries. It supports Flickr photos, Albums (Photosets), Galleries and Collections, along with SmugMug folders, albums and images, and Zenfolio photos, Photosets and Groups. You can also set up authentication so that visitors can see private and protected photos from each provider. When used without the Gutenberg editor Photonic by default overrides the gallery shortcode. In case you happen to be using a theme or plugin that already overrides the gallery shortcode, Photonic provides you with the option to use your own shortcode for Photonic galleries. This lets your plugins coexist. Bear in mind that if you deactivate Photonic you will have to remove all instances of this custom shortcode, something that is not required if you stick to the gallery shortcode. When used with Gutenberg Photonic creates no shortcodes, rather it creates blocks. If some of your posts were written with Gutenberg and some without, Photonic supports both scenarios. Lightboxes Of all plugins free or paid, Photonic has support built in for the highest number of lightbox scripts. This includes scripts that run on pure JavaScript without relying on external libraries, or those that require jQuery. Pure JS Libraries BaguetteBox BigPicture “Gie” Lightbox (GLightbox) LightGallery PhotoSwipe v4 PhotoSwipe v5 Spotlight VenoBox jQuery Based Libraries Colorbox Fancybox2 – not GPL, so the script is not included with the plugin. See the Lightboxes page for details Fancybox3 Featherlight Image Lightbox Lightcase Strip Swipebox Thickbox Obsolete Libraries Fancybox 1 – no update since November 2010 Magnific Popup – no update since February 2016 PrettyPhoto – no update since May 2015 For the non-GPL alternatives like Fancybox2 and the obsolete libraries, Photonic has code to work with them, but you have to install the scripts yourself or rely on them from your theme or another plugin. With the exception of Thickbox the lightboxes have been adapted to become touch and gesture-friendly. See the Lightboxes page for details. Support for Multiple Platforms Flickr The following Flickr concepts are supported in Photonic: Photos PhotoSets (Albums) Galleries Collections Single Photo Authentication For demos of Flickr support visit the Flickr page. Google Photos Google API Change: With effect from 31st March 2025, Google’s Photos API is discontinued (see here for Google’s official announcement). Consequently, Photonic no longer works for Google Photos. For more details, see this thread. Note that while Google’s official announcement says otherwise, as of 20th April 2025 the API is still working, so older versions of Photonic will seem to work. However, there is no guarantee about when Google will truly shut it off. SmugMug The following SmugMug concepts are supported in Photonic: User Tree Photos Albums Folders For demos of SmugMug support visit the SmugMug page. Zenfolio The following Zenfolio concepts are supported in Photonic: Photos PhotoSets (Galleries and Collections) Groups Group Hierarchies For demos of Zenfolio support visit the Zenfolio page. Instagram In mid-September 2022 Meta / Facebook / Instagram changed its rules to disallow individual developers (i.e. developers not operating as a business) from meaningfully using its API. As a result, Photonic no longer works for Instagram photos. The code is still in place though, and can be used by someone with a business wishing to adopt it. Native WordPress Galleries Your existing galleries are left intact. However you can add a style parameter to a native gallery to open it up to Photonic. The style parameter can take any of the values documented on the Layouts page. Other Photonic Goodies Gallery Wizard The WordPress Classic editor shows up with a button that says “Add / Edit Photonic Gallery”. Clicking on it launches a wizard that helps you interactively build out a gallery with just a few clicks. Gutenberg Support The Gallery Wizard can be accessed via Gutenberg / the Block Editor as well. While creating a block, just look for Photonic. Please refer to the documentation. Video Support Photonic provides gallery and lightbox support for videos as well. Videos of the following sorts are supported: External videos from YouTube or Vimeo can be opened in any of the lightboxes apart from Image Lightbox, Thickbox or BaguetteBox Self-hosted or external videos in MP4 formats can be opened in any of the lightboxes apart from Image Lightbox, PrettyPhoto, Strip or Thickbox Videos hosted by external service providers (Flickr, SmugMug etc.) can be opened as a part of a gallery in any of the lightboxes apart from Image Lightbox, PrettyPhoto, Strip or Thickbox. Some lightboxes have issues with specific features. Please refer to the Lightboxes documentation for more. Deep-Linking and Social Sharing Photonic provides deep-linking support for non-WP images, and by extension, supports social sharing to Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Beautiful Layouts Photonic displays your galleries in multiple forms: A grid of square thumbnails (the default) A grid of circular thumbnails (like Jetpack) A neat justified grid A masonry layout A “horizontal” masonry layout, for those who prefer having their masonry layouts sorted horizontally A tiled, random mosaic (a much improved variant of the Jetpack Tiled Gallery layout) A slideshow, using the Splide script See the Layouts documentation page for details and examples. Obsessively Comprehensive Documentation (OCD) Photonic’s documentation is comprehensive to the point of obsession. And yet, if you find something missing, please feel free to get in touch via the support forum.