PhotoCrate: The Open-Source Photo Library Built on Cloudinary

There are as many reasons we stop what we’re doing to capture that perfect image as there are, well, images. There are billions of images now, no, many trillions of images, each one a moment in time, a tiny instant of our lives and experiences that we felt a need to capture, to save, and revisit later to remind ourselves of what it was like to be alive in that instant. 

Now that we’re all taking more photos than ever before, managing and organizing this always-expanding library of memories  has become more challenging.The catalog of our memories deserves special treatment.

Which is why PhotoCrate as created, an open-source web app built on Next.js, as a way to simplify the way you organize and manage your personal photo library, complete with interactive editing and creations, allowing you to get creative.

PhotoCrate is an open-source web app built as a Starter Template to instantly self-host and deploy your own photo library. It’s built with Next.js, a React framework, and Cloudinary, the leading image and video API, to provide you with the ability to upload, manage, and transform your library.

PhotoCrate includes a gallery view with the ability to preview all the images in your collection and an editor with capabilities like AI-powered enhancements, background removal, filters, dynamic cropping and resizing, and other effects.

Using Creations you can create Collages, Animations, and Color Pop to bring new life to your existing photos, and organize them by marking your favorites.

PhotoCrate leverages the Next.js App Router to build a dynamic experience, including using Server Components to optimize app performance and reliably manage requests to Cloudinary.

To deliver a powerful photo library and interactive editor, PhotoCrate uses Cloudinary uploading and storage, which instantly accesses the transformation API and advanced AI capabilities.

You can get started two ways with PhotoCrate. The first is to deploy your new project. Second, create it locally.

To deploy, you can use web platforms like Vercel, to instantly deploy a new instance of PhotoCrate.

To get started locally, run the following command in your terminal:

```bash
npx create-next-app@latest -e https://github.com/cloudinary-community/photocrate photocrate
```Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Configure your Cloudinary environment variables:

```bash
NEXT_PUBLIC_CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME="<Your Cloud Name>"
NEXT_PUBLIC_CLOUDINARY_API_KEY="<Your API Key>"
CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET="<Your API Secret>"
```Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

And start your project:

```bash
npm run dev
```Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Your new PhotoCrate will be available at http://localhost:3000, leaving you only one thing to do: Upload photos!

PhotoCrate was built and released as an open-source project, allowing you to have full control over your photo library and make PhotoCrate even more powerful.

Head over to the PhotoCrate GitHub to learn how you can get involved or join the Cloudinary Discord to share your own PhotoCrate!