what are currently the best open source projects that allow you to fully automate and manage deployment of your own personal (or multi-user) cloud photos/drive storage service? I found:
[1]: https://github.com/nextcloud
[2]: https://github.com/Piwigo with S3 extension: https://piwigo.org/ext/extension_view.php?eid=691
[3]: others https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/the-big-alternatives-to-google-photos-showdown/ which mentions the most feature packed to be https://photoprism.app/
I migrated my photo collection to https://github.com/jpsim/AWSPics about a year ago, pretty happy with it (so much so that I ended up contributing a number of features and bug fixes back to it). Basically all you have to do, after the initial setup, is an S3 sync to upload new photos, and a gallery web site and resized thumbnails get generated automatically.
All private, you configure usernames and passwords. The ongoing cost is just that of S3 standard / infrequent-access storage, which for my collection of ~50GB is currently costing me about ~$1/month. In terms of the auto-generated gallery (lambda function that traverses an S3 bucket) and the password-protection (CloudFront Origin Access Identity), you're locked in to AWS. But in terms of the data, you by definition have all the files in a simple folder tree on your local disk too, you can back it up wherever else you want, you can migrate it elsewhere quite easily. And AWSPics itself is open-source.
Or, just syncthing, if you don't need a specializes photo web interface. They apparently added support for client-side support recently, so you can put it on some random vserver as well.
