Photofield

Photofield is a self-hosted photo gallery and viewer designed for very fast browsing of large photo libraries on commodity hardware. It is non-invasive: your filesystem is the source of truth, and originals are not modified.

Key Features

• Seamless zoomable interface across views for quick detail inspection
• Progressive multi-resolution loading from previews to full-quality media
• Read-only, filesystem-based collections with non-destructive behavior
• Fast indexing optimized for large libraries
• Flexible thumbnail and media pipeline, including reuse of existing thumbnails
• Basic video support (including use of pre-generated multiple resolutions)
• Optional semantic search via a separate AI component and optional tagging (alpha)

Use Cases

• Browsing and searching large personal photo archives stored on NAS or local disks
• Complementing other photo management tools with a fast, read-only viewer
• Serving a lightweight family photo portal with directory-based separation

Limitations and Considerations

• No built-in user accounts, authentication, or authorization
• Not optimized for many concurrent users due to server-side state handling
• Initial page load can be slow on weaker CPUs or cold storage caches
• No on-the-fly video transcoding

Photofield is a strong fit for users who want a fast, simple, non-destructive photo viewer that scales well to large libraries. Its single-binary deployment and caching approach make it easy to run while keeping originals untouched.