When designing the recent website for the animation and design firm, Frame Machine, I explored many photo plugins to showcase their work and office. I wanted to find the best slider, carousel, and mosaic plugins. I did online research and chatted with experienced WordPress developers. It was a long process of trial and error. I finally found three that I like and will use in the future and the people at Frame Machine liked as well.
I explored many carousel plugins before a developer suggested the WonderPlugin for the Design page. It worked like a charm. I like the white border it puts around images with an optional description area. It also gives you control of the thumbnail image so you can crop it however you like.
I wanted a simple slider for one of their individual properties page. The Meta Gallery Pro (also known as Meta Slider and Carousel with Lightbox Pro) worked best for me. The transparent overlay which covers the bottom third allowed for a nice area to title the slider.
For the mosaic gallery on the About page, the Modula plugin worked just fine so I didn’t dig much deeper. I originally didnt want a plugin that created its own thumbnail images. Modula creates them automatically and does a pretty good job of it.
What has been your experience with image plugins? Are there any you would recommend?