As for us, we couldn’t imagine the site without images. There is one of the essential parts. We hope, that you agree with us. So, if you decide to extend your WordPress site with the photo gallery, you may be confused about which one to choose. Do not panic, because you are the lucky one! Congratulations! You just get a ticket to the big journey with Supsystic team on the Gallery plugins planet during which we will explore and compare different WordPress Gallery plugins. Our journey is getting started, so, take your seat! 
Station 1. Make a choice
What here: choose plugins for future research Do you know how many WordPress plugins exist? 100, 500, 1000? The answer is 2971 (at the end of September). It is almost 3000! How to choose the best 4? We use such a mix of different criterias:
- Ratings
- The development progress
- The number of active installations
- The support status (how quickly the developer team resolve issues)
In the results, we choose 4 plugins:
- Supsystic Gallery plugin
- Essential Grid
- Just Image Grid
- Nextgen Gallery
Let’s visit each of them!
Station 1: Supsystic Photo Gallery
Supsystic Gallery Plugin has both free and PRO versions. Users are able to create responsive photo galleries, tag each image with links, icons, and hover effects.
Short description of unique features
Manage of the image lists 100+: plugin has different available import options. Users can upload images from:
- Flickr
- FTP Server
- Google Drive
- Put iframe into video options
- Tumblr
- WordPress Media Library
Filtering: inside a plugin builder you can create and customize your own category. 
Image ordering: PRO version has a pagination feature, which you can find in the Categories Tab. The customizable options are:
- Setting a number of images which you need to display
- Two available rows direction
- Setting a button position
- Chose the pagination align
- Background color for text and container
- Text color
- Padding
- Font and border options
Image features: all options are available in the Images List Tab. Here is only a short list:
- Caption
- Description
- SEO
- Animations
- Links.
Also, users can copy to.move to photos, crop them and add categories. 
Gallery features: Supsystic plugin has 6 available gallery types: fixed, horizontal, mosaic, polaroid, vertical, fixed columns. Each gallery has such customizable options:
- Choosing the border type
- Buttons appearance
- Gallery loader type
- Horizontal image scroll
- Lazy load feature
- Load more button
- Social sharing, and more.
Conclusion
Supsystic Gallery plugin has an easy image management. Moreover, there are several import options, that allow users to upload images not only from the FTP server but also from external social sources.
Station 3: Essential Grid
Essential Grid Gallery was developed by CodeCanyon team. There are 30 available skins, but you can build your own using the drag and drop frontend interface. Every template has the unique style and animation. Everything can be exported and saved. Notice, that Essential Grid is a premium plugin, which you can buy for $27.
Short description of unique features
Filtering: there is an option for adding custom categories and setting up them to the multiple groups. Also, users can tune the pagination with two types of controls: left and right arrows. 
Image ordering: you can sort the images and choose their ordering from the frontend builder by:
- Date
- Title
- Author
- Custom Meta
Image features: there are a lot of customizable image options like ID, URL, Date, Authors, Taxonomy, Captions, and so on. By clicking on them you can easily find the whole list. 
Gallery features: navigate to the Grid Settings and you will see a number of options to edit existing skin or to create a new, like a layout choosing and customization. Also, users can add social streams:
- YouTube
- Flickr
- Vimeo
Conclusion
Essential Grid is one of the best plugins if you search for the advanced filtering options. Moreover, you can even stream the images and text from the social media. Also, the plugin has a lot of advanced options.
Station 4: Justified Image Grid
Justified Image Grid does not have a free version, the PRO costs $27. This plugin was chosen as the best photo gallery on CodeCanyon. One more thing that distinct Justified Image Grid from others is that all images retain their original aspect ratio.
Short description of unique features
Manage of the image lists 100+: there is no option to direct images downloading. You need to use external source (like Fb, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, RSS) or plugin. Moreover, as we mentioned above, images use fixed aspects ratio, which is not good for many photographers, because your gallery will look like in the example below. 
Justified image grid solves this problem by saving a photo’s original aspect ratio. 
Filtering: the plugin is compatible with all kinds of tags, categories. Also, users can use custom taxonomy like genres. 
Image ordering: use a special function called Incomplete last row, that allows choosing among 9 different variants how to close the last row. Also, there is an infinite scroll, which allows downloading images while users scroll down the page. Nevertheless, the plugin does not have a classic pagination. Image features: 1. Thumbnail captions (users can display information on or below the images adding different hover effects, like fade or slide style) 2. Special effects (enhance your gallery interactivity, for example, desaturate, blur, glow, sepia, add light or dark. Customers can show or hide them regardless of the mouse) 3. Custom links (users can add a link to the external sites using images) 
Gallery features:
- Password protection (users can block their galleries views based on the level of users authority, for example, only for logged in users)
- Load more (available via click or scroll)
Conclusion
Justified Image Grid plugin has great animations, hover effects and filtering options. As for disadvantages, be ready to integrate with other plugins to exceed its capability.
Station 5: NextGEN Gallery
If you search a good backend interface for your stock – this plugin is exactly what you need! NextGEN Gallery was developed by Imagely, and considering as one of the popular plugins with more than 20 million downloads. There are a free plugin version and different premium packages.
Short description of unique features
Manage of the image lists 100+: NextGEN offers gallery management system on the backend. You can easily upload photos, import metadata, edit thubnails, add/delete/rearrange/sort images, group galleries into albums, and even more. Notice, that mass actions have more available options than the edition of the single image. 
Filtering: NextGEN Gallery consists of different extensions. One of them is a NextGEN Tagcloud. It helps you to tag each of your photos in all of your galleries individually. Also, Tagcloud allows users to combine all of your tags into a word cloud. Then, a visitor can view only images tagged with that word. 
Image features: with the NextGEN Gallery users can resize each image, rotate it, exclude, copy or move to, recover from backup or delete. As you can see, there are all basic options. In advanced features, you can find add text, watermark, and external links to images. Gallery features: it allows you to customize thumbnails, import metadata and edit lightbox. Users can group galleries to the album.
Conclusion
It has a beautiful and easy to use backend interface, but the weak side is filtering and sorting images. NextGEN Gallery maintains the use of discount coupons, price-lists to sell your works. Also, customers can integrate with eCommerce, PayPal or Stripe.
Station 6: Final thoughts
If you want to have the eye-catching platform for your photos, displaying them in a stylish and beautiful gallery is a way to go. But which one to choose? The truth is that every plugin has their own feature accent, so, only you can decide which is the best based on your business requirements. Every plugin has a live demo and a lot of video tutorials – feel free to take each one for a spin!