Many internet users are storing their images on photo sharing/hosting services like Flickr, SmugMug or Picasa to make sure they are easily reachable and backed up regularly.

OpenPhoto is an open source PHP application that encourages users to host their images in the cloud (Amazon S3, Rackspace CloudFiles, Google Storage, etc.) on their own and functions as a front-end to manage + present them.

This way, images stay totally under control of users, switching providers become much easier and users won't be limited with the capabilities offered by photo sharing/hosting services.

The front-end has a simplistic interface where photos are displayed as a grid, categorized with tags and searched easily. It is also mobile-friendly and has theming support.

OpenPhoto itself is built on top of the powerful API which makes it possible to improve it or integrate photos with any other apps.

There are various components, from typography to colors, that makes a design impressive. Photos used are definitely one of the most important factors.

Today, almost any type of photo we can dream of exists in the web. And, thankfully, there are many stock photo websites which helps us find them easily.

Here is a list of 12 free stock photo resources that you must bookmark:

stock.xchng

stock.xchng is probably the most popular service which provides free stock photos.

It has 1000s of high-quality images which are very well categorized. Usage requires a free membership.

MorgueFile

MorgueFile lets you to download photos without registration & it has a very open license to use images on almost any type of work.

Besides the free photos, it has an online classroom which teaches about photography & a crowded community discussing in its forums.

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Andrew Berg has created a nice looking, open source flash gallery named Flash Photo Browser.

Flash Photo Browser is used by uploading thumbnails and the original images in the related folders with same names and after that, the application lets you browse the images with a nice effect.

It uses the Flash tweening prototypes, blurred rect prototype, draw rect prototype and requires PHP to run.

Besides the standard look, you can also switch to the thumbnail view with a click.

photoDiary, is a flash web application which lets users to create photo blogs.

Blog owners can upload new photos through an administrator interface easily. Maybe, the most attractive feature of photoDiary is the commenting system. Visitors can leave their comments with a post-it like virtual-papers on any part of the photo.

Visitors can navigate through the photos with the back & forward feature, remove all comments with 1 click or send an e-mail to the blog owner.

P.S. There is an English version besides the original Italian version in the product website.