Free version generates good looking masonry galleries

I like this gallery plugin a lot, because even the free version is capable of generating beautiful galleries that I like the look of:

• I like the look of the masonry gallery;
• It’s easy to add a bunch of images to start a new gallery, then drag and drop to order them;
• I set the gutter to the default 10 pixels;
• I set the image size to “medium,” which I set in media manager to be 400 x 400 pixels.

My tips on laying out an attractive gallery: I like “automatic” column type (fill each row edge to edge with images) and then I set row height to 250 pixels. I set the aspect ratio of each image to match what I think is best for the content. Then I order the images to achieve a pleasing look. That is, avoid a row that’s got just a couple of wide images, because that row will be really tall. Set some portrait-oriented images to fall at the end of the row to keep the row to a moderate height.

The settings include whether or not to display the image title and the image caption. Keep in mind that the TITLE is displayed in the gallery page hover or not, while the CAPTION is displayed only on hover. You set the title and caption for each image in the gallery.

I used my theme’s “additional CSS” to style the titles and captions: bold, centered text and add a semi-transparent background behind the text. In each gallery’s settings you can set the font color and size for titles and captions.