📸 PicPeak - Open Source Photo Sharing for Events

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PicPeak is a powerful, self-hosted open-source alternative to commercial photo-sharing platforms like PicDrop.com and Scrapbook.de. Designed specifically for photographers and event organizers, PicPeak makes it simple to share beautiful, time-limited photo galleries with clients while maintaining full control over your data and branding.

🎮 Live Demo

Try PicPeak without installing anything:

Demo URL	demo.picpeak.app
Admin Panel	demo.picpeak.app/admin
Email	demo@picpeak.app
Password	Demo2026!

The demo resets periodically. Uploaded content may be removed without notice.

🌟 Why Choose PicPeak?

Unlike expensive SaaS solutions, PicPeak gives you:

• 💰 No Monthly Fees - One-time setup, unlimited galleries
• 🔒 Complete Data Control - Your photos stay on your server
• 🎨 White-Label Ready - Full branding customization
• 📱 Mobile-First Design - Beautiful on all devices
• 🚀 Lightning Fast - Optimized performance and caching
• 🌍 Multi-Language - Built-in i18n support (EN, DE)

✨ Key Features

For Photographers

• 📁 Drag & Drop Upload - Simply drop photos into folders
• 🔗 External Media (Reference Mode) - Browse and import from a read‑only external folder library without copying originals
• ⏰ Auto-Expiring Galleries - Set expiration dates (default: 30 days)
• 🔐 Password Protection - Secure client galleries
• 📧 Automated Emails - Creation confirmations and expiration warnings
• 📊 Analytics Dashboard - Track views, downloads, and engagement
• 🎨 Custom Themes - Match your brand perfectly
• 🌐 Public Landing Page - Publish a curated marketing page when guests visit your root URL

For Clients

• 🖼️ Beautiful Galleries - Clean, modern interface
• 📱 Mobile Optimized - Swipe through photos on any device
• ⬇️ Bulk Downloads - Download all photos with one click
• 🔍 Smart Search - Find photos quickly
• 📤 Guest Uploads - Optional client photo uploads
• 🛡️ Download Protection - Advanced image protection with watermarking and right-click prevention

Technical Excellence

• 🐳 Docker Ready - Deploy in minutes
• 🔄 Auto-Processing - Automatic thumbnail generation
• 🗂️ Reference Library Support - Point PicPeak at EXTERNAL_MEDIA_ROOT to reference existing originals, index quickly, and generate thumbnails on demand
• 💾 Smart Storage - Automatic archiving of expired galleries
• 🛡️ Security First - JWT auth, rate limiting, CORS protection
• 📈 Scalable - From small studios to large agencies

🚀 Quick Start

Get PicPeak running in under 5 minutes:

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/the-luap/picpeak.git
cd picpeak

# Copy environment template
cp .env.example .env

# Edit configuration (required: JWT_SECRET)
nano .env

# Start with Docker Compose
docker compose up -d

# Access at http://localhost:3000

Note on Docker file permissions (PUID/PGID)

• When using bind mounts (e.g., ./storage, ./data, ./logs, ./events), ensure the container user can write to these host folders. The backend runs as a non‑root user by default.
• Set PUID and PGID in your .env to match your host user’s UID/GID (run id -u and id -g on the host). Compose maps the container user to these values.
• Example in .env:
  • PUID=1000
  • PGID=1000
• Without this, creating events, uploads, thumbnails, or logs can fail with "Permission denied".

ARM64 (aarch64) systems: Pre-built images include native linux/arm64, no platform flags or emulation needed. If you're on an older image tag that's still amd64-only, see docker-compose.amd64.override.yml for a transitional fallback.

🔄 Release Channels

PicPeak offers two release channels for different needs:

Stable Channel (Recommended)

• Production-ready releases
• Thoroughly tested before release
• Docker tags: stable, latest, or specific version like v2.3.0

Beta Channel

• Early access to new features
• May contain bugs or incomplete functionality
• Docker tags: beta or specific version like v2.3.0-beta.1

Switching Channels

Set the PICPEAK_CHANNEL environment variable in your .env file:

# For stable releases (default)
PICPEAK_CHANNEL=stable

# For beta releases
PICPEAK_CHANNEL=beta

# For a specific version
PICPEAK_CHANNEL=v2.3.0

Then update your containers:

docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yml pull
docker compose -f docker-compose.production.yml up -d

Update Notifications

The admin dashboard automatically notifies you when updates are available for your channel. To disable update checks, set:

UPDATE_CHECK_ENABLED=false

📖 Documentation

Full documentation lives at docs.picpeak.app — deployment, admin settings reference, API docs, webhooks, archive lifecycle, branding, and everything else. Some quick links:

• 🚀 Deployment - Docker, environment variables, reverse proxy, SSL
• ⚙️ Admin Settings - Every tab in the Settings panel
• 🎯 Creating Events - Full event field reference
• 💾 Backup & Restore - Local, S3, rsync destinations
• 🔌 API Reference - REST endpoints, OpenAPI spec, webhooks
• 🪝 Webhooks - Event payloads, signing, filters, templates

Project meta:

• 🤝 Contributing - How to contribute
• 📜 License - MIT License
• 🔒 Security - Security policies
• 📋 Code of Conduct - Community guidelines

🌐 Public Landing Page

Spotlight your studio with a customizable marketing page at /:

• Head to Admin → CMS Pages to enable the public landing page toggle.
• Edit the provided HTML template (rich sections, hero, testimonials) and optional CSS overrides.
• The preview renders in a sandboxed iframe so you can iterate safely before publishing.
• PicPeak sanitizes stored HTML and CSS server-side—scripts, iframes, and unsafe attributes are stripped automatically.
• Use Reset to default anytime to restore the bundled template.
• The backend caches the rendered landing page for 60 seconds by default; override with PUBLIC_SITE_CACHE_TTL_MS if you need a different TTL.
• When the landing page is disabled PicPeak continues to serve the admin SPA/login exactly as before.

🎯 Use Cases

Perfect for:

• 💒 Wedding Photographers - Share ceremony photos securely
• 🎂 Event Photography - Birthday parties, corporate events
• 📸 Portrait Studios - Client galleries with download limits
• 🏢 Corporate Events - Internal photo sharing with branding
• 🎓 School Photography - Secure parent access with expiration

🏗️ Tech Stack

• Backend: Node.js, Express, SQLite/PostgreSQL
• Frontend: React, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion
• Storage: Local filesystem (default) or S3-compatible object store (AWS S3, MinIO, R2, B2, Wasabi, Spaces) — see Storage Backends
• Email: SMTP with customizable templates
• Analytics: Privacy-focused with Umami integration

💾 Storage Backends

PicPeak supports two storage backends for photos, thumbnails, hero images, watermarks, and archive zips. Both are configured via environment variables; no code change is required to switch.

Capability	STORAGE_BACKEND=local (default)	STORAGE_BACKEND=s3
Photo / thumbnail / hero storage	Local filesystem under STORAGE_PATH	Bucket on any S3-compatible service
Admin UI upload	✅	✅
Filesystem auto-import (chokidar watcher)	✅	❌ — disabled (use the upload API)
Watermarks, fingerprinting, fragmentation	✅	✅ (materialized to a tmp file just-in-time)
Bulk download zips (cached + on-the-fly)	✅	✅
Backups	✅	✅
External media reference mode (EXTERNAL_MEDIA_ROOT)	✅ (always local)	✅ (still local — not migrated)

Switching to an S3-compatible backend

1. Provision a bucket and credentials. The minimum IAM policy is documented in .env.example.
2. Set STORAGE_BACKEND=s3 plus STORAGE_S3_BUCKET, STORAGE_S3_REGION, STORAGE_S3_ACCESS_KEY, STORAGE_S3_SECRET_KEY. For non-AWS providers (MinIO, R2, B2, …) also set STORAGE_S3_ENDPOINT.
3. If you have existing local content, copy it first: node backend/scripts/migrate-storage.js --dry-run then node backend/scripts/migrate-storage.js. The script is idempotent and writes a failures CSV.
4. Restart the backend. The startup check pings the bucket and refuses to boot on misconfig.

Note: presigned-URL serving (zero-bandwidth direct downloads from S3) is intentionally not in v1 — every request still streams through the backend so watermarks, devtools-detection, and access logging keep working.

🔔 Webhooks

PicPeak POSTs event/photo lifecycle notifications to URLs you configure under Settings → Webhooks. Each delivery is signed HMAC-SHA256 with a per-webhook secret in the X-PicPeak-Signature header so receivers can verify the request really came from your PicPeak instance.

Event types

Event	Fires when
event.created	Gallery created (admin or API)
event.published	Draft becomes live (is_draft: true → false) — also fires when an event is created with is_draft=false
event.archived	Bulk-archive, manual archive, or auto-archive on expiry
event.expired	Expiration checker marks the gallery inactive (fires before event.archived in the cascade)
photo.uploaded	Admin upload, API upload, guest upload, or auto-import
photo.deleted	Single delete, bulk delete (NOT fired per-photo when an event is archived — receivers infer from event.archived to avoid flooding)

Payload shape

{
  "id": "delivery-uuid",
  "type": "event.published",
  "created_at": "2026-04-28T05:25:00.000Z",
  "data": {
    "event": { "id": 123, "slug": "wedding-smith", "share_url": "https://..." }
  }
}

Also sent on every request:

• X-PicPeak-Signature — HMAC-SHA256(secret, raw_body) as hex
• X-PicPeak-Event — the event type (handy for routing without parsing the body)
• X-PicPeak-Delivery — UUID for idempotency on the receiver side
• User-Agent: PicPeak-Webhooks/1.0

Verifying signatures

Node.js

const crypto = require('crypto');
function verify(secret, rawBody, signature) {
  const expected = crypto.createHmac('sha256', secret).update(rawBody).digest('hex');
  const a = Buffer.from(expected, 'hex');
  const b = Buffer.from(signature, 'hex');
  if (a.length !== b.length) return false;
  return crypto.timingSafeEqual(a, b);
}

Python

import hmac, hashlib
def verify(secret: str, raw_body: bytes, signature: str) -> bool:
    expected = hmac.new(secret.encode(), raw_body, hashlib.sha256).hexdigest()
    return hmac.compare_digest(expected, signature)

curl + openssl (one-liner for a quick replay)

SIG=$(printf '%s' "$BODY" | openssl dgst -sha256 -hmac "$SECRET" | awk '{print $2}')
[ "$SIG" = "$RECEIVED_SIG" ] && echo OK || echo MISMATCH

Retries + observability

• 2xx → success, recorded with latency
• Non-2xx or network error → exponential backoff: 1m → 5m → 30m → 2h → 12h, max 5 attempts
• After max attempts: status failed, surfaces in Settings → Webhooks → Deliveries with a "Replay" button
• Up to 5 deliveries in flight at once; one slow consumer can't block others (configurable via WEBHOOK_DELIVERY_CONCURRENCY)
• Response body truncated to 1KB before storage so chatty receivers don't bloat the audit log

The deliveries page (/admin/webhooks/:id/deliveries) shows every attempt with timestamp, status, HTTP code, latency, payload sent, signature, and response. Click "Send test event" to fire a synthetic delivery for any event type.

SSRF protection

Webhook URLs are validated against the same private-IP blocklist used elsewhere in the app — loopback, private RFC1918 ranges, link-local, .local/.internal hostnames, cloud metadata endpoints. The check runs both at create time and per-delivery (DNS-rebinding mitigation).

For local development with a receiver on the same machine or docker network, set WEBHOOK_ALLOW_PRIVATE_URLS=true. Production deployments must leave this OFF.

💻 System Requirements

Minimum Requirements

• CPU: 2 CPU cores
• RAM: 2GB minimum
• Storage: 20GB minimum (plus photo storage needs)
• OS: Linux (Ubuntu 20.04+), macOS, or Windows with WSL2
• Node.js: v18.0.0 or higher
• Database: SQLite (included) or PostgreSQL 12+

Docker Requirements (Recommended)

• Docker: v20.10.0+
• Docker Compose: v2.0.0+

Video Support Requirements

When enabling video uploads, consider these additional resources:

Resource	Recommendation	Notes
RAM	4GB+ recommended	FFmpeg processing requires more memory
Storage	Plan for 10-100x more	Videos are significantly larger than images
CPU	Additional cores help	Video thumbnail extraction is CPU-intensive
Bandwidth	Higher throughput	Video streaming requires more bandwidth

Technical Notes:

• FFmpeg is bundled via npm (@ffmpeg-installer/ffmpeg) - no system installation required
• Maximum upload size: 10GB per video file
• Chunked upload support for files >100MB (resumable uploads)
• Supported formats: MP4, WebM, MOV, AVI
• Video thumbnails are automatically generated from the first few seconds

For Nginx/Reverse Proxy: If using Nginx, increase the client max body size:

client_max_body_size 10G;
proxy_read_timeout 3600;
proxy_send_timeout 3600;

🤝 Contributing

We love contributions! PicPeak is built by photographers, for photographers. Whether you're fixing bugs, adding features, or improving documentation, your help is welcome.

See our Contributing Guide for details.

📊 Comparison with Alternatives

Feature	PicPeak	PicDrop	Scrapbook.de
Self-Hosted	✅	❌	❌
Custom Branding	✅ Full	Limited	Limited
Monthly Cost	$0	$29-199	€19-99
Storage Limit	Unlimited*	50-500GB	100-1000GB
Client Uploads	✅	✅	✅
API Access	✅	Paid	❌
Open Source	✅	❌	❌

*Limited only by your server storage

🛡️ Security

PicPeak takes security seriously:

• 🔐 Password hashing with bcrypt
• 🎫 JWT-based authentication
• 🚦 Rate limiting on all endpoints
• 🛡️ CORS protection
• 📝 Activity logging
• 🔒 Secure file access

Found a security issue? Please open a security issue on GitHub

📸 Screenshots

🎛️ Admin Dashboard

Get a complete overview of your photo galleries, analytics, and system status.

📊 Analytics & Insights

Track gallery performance, view statistics, and monitor user engagement.

📁 Event Management

Organize and manage your photo galleries with intuitive event management tools.

✨ Key Interface Highlights

👆 Click to see more interface details

What makes PicPeak's interface special:

• 🎨 Clean Design: Modern, photographer-friendly interface
• 📱 Responsive: Perfect on desktop, tablet, and mobile
• ⚡ Fast Loading: Optimized for quick photo browsing
• 🔒 Secure Access: Password-protected galleries with expiration
• 📤 Easy Uploads: Drag & drop functionality for effortless photo management
• 🎯 Client-Focused: Intuitive gallery experience for your clients

🗺️ Roadmap

We're constantly improving PicPeak and welcome contributions from our community! If you have ideas for new features or want to help implement existing ones, please open an issue or submit a pull request. Your contributions help make PicPeak better for everyone.

🚧 Beta Features (Use at your own risk)

These features are currently in beta testing and may have limited functionality or stability:

Feature	Description	Status
Simple Deployment Script	One-click deployment script for quick server setup with automated configuration and dependency installation	🧪 Beta

📋 Future Enhancements

Feature	Description	Priority	Status
Backup & Restore	Comprehensive backup system with S3/MinIO support, automated scheduling, and safe restore functionality	High	✅ Implemented
External Media Library (Reference Mode)	Use an external folder library as a read‑only source with import and on‑demand thumbnail generation	High	✅ Implemented
Download Protection	Advanced image protection system with canvas rendering, invisible watermarking, right-click prevention, and DevTools detection to protect photos from unauthorized downloads	High	✅ Implemented
Gallery Templates	Multiple gallery layouts (grid, masonry, carousel, timeline, hero, mosaic) with custom CSS styling support. Includes starter templates like Apple Liquid Glass for complete visual customization	Medium	✅ Implemented
Face Recognition	AI-powered face detection to help guests find their photos and create automatic person-based albums	Low	🔄 Open
Gallery Feedback	Allow guests to like, rate, and comment on photos with admin notifications and moderation	Medium	✅ Implemented
Video Support	Upload and display videos alongside photos in galleries with streaming support	Low	✅ Implemented
Multiple Administrators	Support for multiple admin accounts with role-based permissions and activity tracking	Low	✅ Implemented
Filtering & Export Options	Filter photos by likes, ratings, comments, or favorites. Search by filename. Sort by date, name, size, or rating. Export filtered selections as ZIP or generate Capture One/Lightroom-compatible file lists for professional workflows	Medium	✅ Implemented

Status Legend: ✅ Implemented | 🚧 In Progress | 🔄 Open | 📋 Planned

☕ Support the Project

PicPeak is free, open source, and self-hostable forever. If it saves you time or replaces a paid subscription, consider buying me a coffee — it directly funds the time spent on new features, bug fixes, and keeping the demo + docs running.

Other ways to support without spending anything: ⭐ star the repo, share it with photographer friends, file good bug reports, or open a PR.

🙏 Acknowledgments

PicPeak is inspired by the best features of commercial platforms while remaining completely open source. Special thanks to all contributors who make this project possible.

👥 Contributors

A huge thank you to the people whose code, reports, and feedback have shaped PicPeak:

• @Luca-Timo — native Apple Silicon multi-arch images, external-URL toggle for legal CMS pages, the lazy-loaded folder tree picker, the admin-email picker on event creation, the data-driven self-hosted webfont system, the gallery header/banner decoupling, and several typed-API refactors. Consistently raises the bar with thoughtful PRs.
• @Rekoo-PS — sharp-eyed bug reporter and product feedback. Filed the issues that drove the login-loop fix, the gallery-loading skeleton work, the redirection cleanup, the mobile-lightbox overhaul, the admin-events search-counter fix, the photo-count column, and the bulk-delete workflow. Also a BuyMeACoffee supporter — the kind of feedback loop that keeps the project useful for real deployments.

If you've contributed and aren't listed here, please open a PR — this list is meant to grow.

🤖 AI-Assisted Development

This project was generated with the assistance of AI technology, but has been:

• ✅ Fully tested end-to-end by human developers
• 🔒 Security audited with comprehensive security checks
• 👨‍💻 Human-reviewed for code quality and best practices
• 🧪 Production-tested in real-world scenarios

We believe in transparent development practices and the responsible use of AI as a tool to accelerate development while maintaining high standards of quality and security.

📄 License

PicPeak is released under the MIT License. Use it freely for personal or commercial projects.

🚀 Ready to Get Started?

1. ⭐ Star this repository to show your support
2. 📖 Read the docs at docs.picpeak.app
3. 🐛 Report issues or request features
4. 🤝 Join our community and contribute!

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Made with ❤️ by photographers, for photographers
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