Alternatives to Google Photos

Photos are among the most personal things we have. Faces of family members, places we've visited, private moments. Google Photos offers virtually unlimited storage, automatic backup, and an impressive search system that recognises faces, places, and objects. All wonderful — except that to do it, Google analyses every single image you upload.

Switching to an alternative service takes some planning, but it's absolutely doable. The best options offer automatic backup from your phone, album organisation, sharing, and often facial recognition too — all running locally on your own server, with no company having access to your images.

For those who also need photo editing tools, open-source alternatives to Photoshop and Lightroom are now mature enough to cover most needs, from basic edits to advanced post-processing. These aren't toys: GIMP and Darktable are used by professional photographers around the world.

On this page you'll find both solutions for managing and storing your photos safely, and tools for editing them without relying on proprietary software.