So, what is the best (free) photo gallery software and/or hosting service?

[ConsAreLiars]

Thanks to this group, I've begun going throught my slides and scanning them, and ther are a lot of images I'd like to give out to whoever (non-commercial) wants them. I'd like to set up several thumbnail indexes and galleries, with a slideshow of images at a user-selectable size (small for dialup and small computer screen settings, larger for those who prefer that) and within the slideshow offer the option to download at various resolutions. Here's one reason I want to do that:

[ET Awful]

1. Well, if you have webspace available already, Coppermine

is a free script package that works very well (that's what I use on my site with all the cat photos).

It's pretty easy to set up too.

Take a look at how the gallery in my sig is set up. It first gives a small image (slightly larger than a typical thumbnail but this is configurable as well), then whe you click that it gives medium. If you want the full resolution, you can click that medium image afterwards.

It only requires you to upload the full size image, it does the resizing for you. It's pretty nice.

[F.Gordon]

2. For free? I have no idea

Other than what ET Awful suggests, which I do as well. I use my free 25 meg ISP space for one online 'album'(lousy bandwidth) and then I have about 100meg of space I use on a web server that I have for another. I just designed my own photo pages though. Didn't use any software that does it for you.

But... I like smugmug. At this point I'm just playing around with it but I'll probably start transfering more of my 'snapshots' to it. But it's not free. It's cheap though. Does everything you asked about. And you could actually sell prints of your photos... like the great one you just put up. Also, as you can see from this link, your photograph is protected with a "Proof" stamp. (see 2nd link below)

http://www.smugmug.com/

http://lenscapephoto.smugmug.com/gallery/397750/1/15577546/Large

But for free? What ET Awful said.....

[ConsAreLiars]

3. Wow, what very Fine Art !

My ISP (speakeasy.net) offers a basic service with add-ons optional. 100 megs of webspace, no traffic limits, is another $5 per month. And they include some kind of gallery template. The smugmug site is very elegant, and seems to have what I want, and the print-selling mechanism would very helpful if that were my goal ('d also like to see some mechanism for managing reproduction permissions), but I was hoping to start off with something that allows me more flexibility to shape the presentation to my liking until I find out what I like best. Coppermine may be closer to what I need.

[Blue_In_AK]

4. That's a beautiful shot, Cons. n/t