Photonic Gallery & Lightbox for Flickr, SmugMug & Others vs Gallery by Visual Portfolio

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.

Photo gallery and portfolio plugin for WordPress ★★★★★ Visual Portfolio is a WordPress gallery plugin built around gallery and portfolio blocks. Use it for photo galleries, image galleries, video galleries, and albums. Pick masonry, justified, tiles, grid, slider, or carousel layouts. See Live Demo | Documentation | GitHub Keep it simple with a basic image gallery, or go further with nested galleries, filterable portfolio grids, post grids, and taxonomy grids. Add images, choose a layout, then tweak skins and the lightbox. You do not need to write code. 🏆 Visual Gallery Builder Build gallery and portfolio blocks without coding. Customize layouts visually with live preview in the editor. Supported layouts: Masonry, Justified, Tiles, Grid, Slider, and Carousel. You get skins and the usual gallery controls in one place. 🚀 Optimized to be Fast as Native Despite the rich functionality, the Visual Portfolio is optimized as much as possible, to be fast and lightweight. Due to the modular code structure, all scripts and styles are loaded only when they are needed for the current page that displays your gallery. So, your pages will never load unused features. Pictures are not loaded in the main thread due to lazy loading. Moreover, our plugin is compatible with third-party WebP providers and image optimization plugins. Smart adaptive image sizes fully supported in any gallery, created with Visual Portfolio plugin. 📱 Layouts Our gallery plugin shipped with popular layouts such as Masonry and Justified (Flickr). Every feature optimized and works seamlessly with all of these layouts, you just need to set up and go with no headache. See it in action: Masonry Gallery Justified (Flickr) Gallery Tiles Gallery Grid Gallery Slider Gallery (Fade, Carousel, Coverflow) 🎨 Prebuilt Skins Showcase your projects and gallery images with clean and beautiful skins. See it in action: Classic Fade Emerge Fly Caption Move ⚙️ Easy to Customize The gallery block with live preview includes a lot of design settings that are point-and-click, no coding knowledge required. If you’re a bit more adventurous, the custom CSS module and PHP filters are set up to be easily used by developers. 📁 Portfolio Post Type Optional custom post type portfolio will ensure all your portfolios to keep in a single post type. In this way, you can distinguish your portfolios from other post types. Taxonomies are used to categorize your portfolio types, it will help you to group and sort your portfolios. Moreover, you can use these portfolios as a source for your showcase gallery using Visual Portfolio block. Customize and rename Portfolio archive templates using the gallery block and page builders: https://www.visualportfolio.com/docs/portfolio-archive/ In case you want to use Visual Portfolio plugin for photo gallery only you can disable custom post type registration. 💎 Posts Query Builder Fine-tune the source of your galleries. Display posts, portfolios, taxonomies, and any other post types, filter by taxonomies, author, and date ranges, include or exclude specific posts, and build post grids or taxonomy grids from the same workflow. 🖼️ Photo Galleries Create galleries from image sets right inside the gallery block: drop your images in and the gallery is ready. You can create unlimited image galleries with different styles, build album galleries with nested galleries in Pro, and combine images with video items for richer visual storytelling. ⚡ Powerful Lightbox Visual Portfolio uses only modern solutions, and lightboxes are not an exception. High performance, mobile optimization, retina-ready, and a wide range of features available in Fancybox and PhotoSwipe plugins, that you can choose for your gallery lightboxes. Mobile Optimized Looks great on every device. Swipe to navigate, spread/pinch to zoom in/out supported on touch devices. GPU Accelerated Hardware accelerated animations for better performance and seamless user experience. Smart Loading Gallery images are responsive and loaded progressively using lazy loading on demand. Social Sharing You can allow users to share photos on Facebook, X, and Pinterest with social sharing buttons. 📹 Video and 🎵 Audio Support Visual Portfolio plugin allows you to work with audios and videos within a single gallery. You can paste a supported video or audio URL and it will work automatically in the popup gallery. In Pro, you can also add dedicated video items directly to image galleries and post grids, including autoplay on open or playback on hover. The full list with supported vendors see below. Supported Video Vendors: Youtube Vimeo Instagram (Reels, video posts and IGTV links) TikTok Twitch Facebook Video DailyMotion Wistia VideoPress TED Rutube Metacafe Coub Self Hosted Video Supported Audio Vendors: Spotify SoundCloud Mixcloud Beatport Self Hosted Audio 📈 SEO-Friendly Visual Portfolio plugin is built keeping SEO and performance in mind by defining proper structure and tags. Furthermore, due to optimization, it is lightweight and fast when it comes to page load. In addition our plugin add images in the sitemap for All In One SEO, Rank Math, and Yoast SEO plugins 🏳️ Multilingual & Translation Ready Visual Portfolio adds a new layer of compatibility for WPML. All blocks are compatible with it and ready for translation. https://www.visualportfolio.com/docs/multilingual/ 🛠 Built For Developers Visual Portfolio gives you a wide range of filters and actions to customize every part of your gallery. Also, it allows you to overwrite templates and change it in the theme directory. Moreover, you can customize separate portfolio lists using custom CSS and CSS Variables. 🔥 Visual Portfolio Pro The Visual Portfolio plugin is also available in a professional version which includes more features and enhanced performance! Learn more about Visual Portfolio Pro In order to maintain the free version of the plugin on an ongoing basis, and to provide quick and effective support for free, we offer a Pro version of the plugin. The Pro version allows you to: Video Items in Galleries and Post Grids Add video items directly into image galleries and post grids, with autoplay on open or play on hover. Gallery Format and Albums Display nested galleries and album-style content in image galleries, posts, and taxonomy grids. Taxonomies as Gallery Source Build galleries directly from taxonomy terms, not only from posts or images. Advanced Skin Settings Image Filters and Blend Mode – apply Instagram-like filters on images for Normal and Hover states Transformations – control the image transformation and border radius for Normal and Hover states Typography – control every text part of gallery captions and overlays Dimensions – controls paddings, margins and border radius of captions and overlays Stylish Interaction Effects Hover Tilt Effect Custom Hover Image – useful for animated GIFs Caption Move Skin Social Feeds Automatically fetch posts from your social networks to display in gallery on your site. Instagram Youtube Vimeo Unsplash X Flickr Dribbble Twitch RSS VK (Vkontakte) Theft Protection Watermarks – add your logo on top of your images to make them harder to steal Password Form – add a password to gallery blocks and send it to your clients Age Gate – Protect visitors from viewing adult content Photos Proofing Communicate with your clients in a modern way: Create Proofing Gallery – Easily create a gallery with photos, as you did before. Change styling, layout, etc. if you want. Send to a Client – Send photos collection to your client for proofing. The client will be able to leave comments on individual photos and communicate with you. Get Approval – Once the client approves the selection, you will be able to see the selected photos and copy filenames for post-production. Advanced Click Actions Manually configure how to open specific item types and filter clicking on title or on image. Responsive Breakpoints Settings Manually control the screen sizes, which used by the automatic responsive function to adapt your gallery layouts. AJAX Improvements Requests properly cached and links preloaded before you click. Advanced Query Settings Filter by Author, Date Range, Ignore Sticky Posts, exclude posts without Featured Image, and much more… Albums, Gallery Format, and Taxonomy Grids Build nested gallery structures, output gallery format content, and create visual taxonomy grids from the same workflow. See the Taxonomies demo. Quick View for Posts and Pages Display posts and pages in popup iframe, not only image and video galleries. It’s like works preview in Dribbble and Behance, but on your own site. Popup Gallery Deep Linking Makes URL automatically change when you open popup and you can easily link to a specific popup image. White Label Possibility to use your brand name and logo instead of our “Visual Portfolio”. Find much more portfolio and gallery features of Visual Portfolio Pro today! 🌟 More Features Lightboxes for Standard WordPress Images Image lightbox available for Visual Portfolio galleries as well as for standard WordPress images and galleries in your content. AJAX Loading and Pagination Every dynamic part of the Visual Portfolio plugin is using AJAX to update the gallery content in live mode. Organized galleries and portfolio lists will make your website look more professional, easy to navigate and result in a better user experience. We prepared 3 types of paginations for you: Infinite Scroll Load More button Paged pagination Filter Filter your gallery and portfolio by taxonomies (mostly categories and tags). Let users select a category and see the relevant items. Sort gallery items by date and title Users may sort gallery items by date and title. GIFs Support Our plugin automatically displays the animated GIFs in photo galleries. Also, you can show the animated GIFs on mouseover with the Pro plugin. Items Gutters Manually adjust the spacing between gallery images and projects. Images Lazy Loading Images lazy loading boost your page loading speed. You don’t need to worry about it, just use your beautiful images in the gallery, Visual Portfolio will do all the work for you. Images Aspect Ratio All built-in gallery layouts support custom image aspect ratio. You don’t need to crop the image manually. Images Focal Point Sometimes it is very important to specify the focal point so that the custom aspect ratio does not cut off important parts of the photos. For example, people’s faces on the portrait photos. Custom Links for Gallery Images By default, gallery images will contain the links to original images. You can manually set the custom links, for example, to a website or Youtube video. RTL Support Visual Portfolio natively supports RTL languages, proper styles loaded automatically, without user interaction. Elementor and WPBakery Page Builder support There is a helpful widget for Elementor and shortcode for WPBakery Page Builder, which will let you select one of the available Saved Layouts and output it. Responsive and Mobile Ready Visual Portfolio and Galleries are completely responsive and mobile ready – layouts automagically transforms to display perfectly on your screen size. Custom CSS Deeply customize the look of your gallery using custom CSS and CSS Variables. … And Much More All available features you can find on the plugin’s site and documentation.