MovableType is great for managing text-based blogs as well as a photo or two embedded in an article. Photo gallery management requires something more. TypePad has come up with a very clean, complimentary approach.
However, my goal is to manage our growing library of family photos over years and years using an approach that the whole family can use. Apple's iPhoto has been an excellent way to gather, store, lightly edit, and arrange what is now a library of thousands of photos that we've accumulated over three years. I've read about performance concerns, but I think we are riding behind the curve of performance, so I'm happy. (Every night our iPhoto library, which is simply directories and jpg files, is backed up to our file server... don't want to lose them.)
Because iPhoto lets us easily title, categorize, and group a photo and then add text comments, I want a web-gallery publishing solution that draws from that work. I don't want to have to retype captions and titles.
iPhoto has a built in HTML export method, but it isn't very flexible. If I don't like the way text or buttons are positioned, I can't do anything about it.
That's where Drooling Cat's BetterHTMLExport comes in. It integates with iPhoto and provides templates that you can use "out of the box" or tweak. There is a forum where you can get templates and share your own. It still feels like a work in progress, but it is functional and feels like the solution I'll want to use for years to come.
ImageRodeo is an application that also has the template building/sharing concept. It has both the pros and cons of not being integrated with iPhoto. The pros are that you can work with digital photos from a variety of sources... not just iPhoto. However, the big drawback for me is that ImageRodeo does not read the photo titles and comments from the iPhoto library, so I have to retype them all.
It feels like there is not a tagging standard with digital photos like there is with mpg music files. Or if there is one, iPhoto and ImageRodeo are not talking using one. I prefer the ImageRodeo templates, but I'll continue to use BetterHTMLExport because it picks up photo titles and comments.