I wasn’t very familiar with the earlier versions of PicsEngine. It was a Flash based self-hosted web application that allowed you to create and share image galleries on the web, but I could be wrong. PicsEngine 4 is almost like an independent version of MobileMe’s Gallery feature.
Built outside of the famous crashy plugin that version 3 was based on, PicsEngine is beautiful in code as much as it is in pixels. The gallery management user interface is so polished and fluid, you can’t help but wonder whether all our future native apps are going to be written in open web technologies. Michael Villar, the designer and developer behind PicsEngine, has used some svelte UI chrome, dark in tones, but very easy on the eyes.
On the front end, PicsEngine is bare as it is beautiful. Thumbnails of your image galleries await a click; just click to open up a fullscreen slideshow. PicsEngine also supports geotagged images, so if your images have a place attached to them, your visitors are going to be following your every step. Check out the demo gallery to get a feel for the UI. Works fantastically on the iPad, with a scarily native app feel to it.
PicsEngine costs 5€/month, or 50€/year for unlimited uploads and 10GB/month of traffic. It’s free for 30 days with a painless signup. Highly recommended pixels.
Some shots of the admin UI:
