We heard you loud and clear: Imagely is powerful, but it shouldn’t take a learning curve to use it.
Over the years, we’ve built one of the most comprehensive gallery and eCommerce platforms for photographers. It’s packed with features to showcase your work, sell prints and digital downloads, proof images with clients, and so much more. But we also know that power shouldn’t come at the cost of simplicity.
That’s why we’re thrilled to announce Imagely 4.0—a complete redesign of the plugin experience that makes building galleries, managing albums, and selling your work more intuitive than ever before.
In This Article
- What's New: Faster Workflows, Better Organization
- A Modern Interface That Feels Right at Home
What’s New: Faster Workflows, Better Organization
You told us: “Imagely has incredible functionality, but there’s a bit of a learning curve.” We took that feedback seriously.
Our goal wasn’t to change what makes Imagely powerful. It was to make that power easier to access. So we rebuilt the entire interface from the ground up with one question in mind: How can we help photographers spend less time figuring out settings and more time doing what they love?
The result? A streamlined, modern experience that lets you create stunning galleries and manage your photography business without the headache.
Galleries: From Dozens of Clicks to One Seamless Flow
Remember the old process? Upload images in one screen, navigate to Manage Galleries to add metadata, customize your layout in another screen, jump back and forth trying to find a setting you need… That’s a ton of clicks across multiple screens just to get your gallery live.
Not anymore.
With the new gallery builder, everything happens in one place with a simple tab-based flow:
- Upload your images (drag-and-drop or select from media library)
- Customize your layout with live preview
- Settings for metadata, lightbox options, proofing, eCommerce, and more
- Publish and you’re done
What used to take 10-15 minutes of clicking around now takes 3 minutes. Same powerful features, zero confusion.
Have questions about using the new builder? Check out our step-by-step instructions!
Albums: Organize & Create Collections in Half the Time
Just like galleries, albums also have a streamlined management dashboard where you can see all your existing albums. To create a new album, just click the big green button to Add a New Album.
From there, you can use the visual checkbox selection to search for and add multiple galleries to your album at once. Then, just use the builder to drag-and-drop galleries in a new order, preview/select layouts, and enable customizations, like breadcrumbs, animations, eCommerce, and more.
Creating an album that showcases your best work—whether it’s weddings, portraits, or product photography— now takes just a few painless minutes.
Have questions about creating albums in the new builder? See the tutorial!
Tag Management: Find, Edit, and Organize in Seconds
If you manage hundreds or thousands of images, tags are essential for staying organized. Now, the interface matches the modern design and improved usability you’ll find throughout the plugin.
The refreshed tag management screen gives you:
- Clean, modern table design with better visual hierarchy
- Enhanced search to quickly find specific tags
- Clear column organization showing name, slug, description, and image count
It’s the same powerful tag functionality you’ve always had, now presented in a cleaner, more intuitive interface.
eCommerce: From Scattered Settings to a Guided System
Here’s where the old Imagely really showed its complexity. Setting up eCommerce used to mean hunting through scattered settings across multiple menu locations. Users told us they’d spend an hour or more just figuring out where everything was, let alone actually configuring it correctly.
That’s why we’ve completely rebuilt the entire eCommerce experience from the ground up. Now, everything lives in one unified system with consistent design and intuitive navigation.
Guided Setup That Tracks Your Progress
Getting started is now straightforward with a step-by-step flow:
- Studio Details – Your business information
- Email Setup – Customer communication templates
- Payment Setup – Configure Stripe, PayPal, or manual payments
- Page Setup – Checkout and cart pages
- PrintLab Integration – Automated fulfillment options
Each tab shows exactly what you need, with clear indicators of what’s required versus optional. Setup that used to take over an hour now takes minutes, and you can see your progress as you go.
Pricelists: Manage Your Products with Clarity
Creating pricelists for different clients or event types is now visual and organized. You can view all your pricelists in one easy dashboard. The new interface for creating a pricelist features:
- Tabbed navigation for different product types (Prints, Canvas, Digital Downloads, etc.)
- Clean table views showing costs and prices at a glance
- Bulk markup tools to quickly adjust pricing across multiple products
- Drag-and-drop reordering to prioritize your best-selling items
Orders, Proofing & Coupons: Professional Management Tools
Every aspect of running your photography business gets the same attention to detail:
- Orders – Filter by date, status, or payment method. Sort or search for orders quicky, view order info instantly, and export data with one click.
- Proofing – Manage client proofing sessions with searchable tables and date filters. See which clients have favorited or ordered images.
- Coupons – Create and track promotional codes with status filters (Current, Upcoming, Completed). Monitor usage and effectiveness.
- Other Options – Configure shipping rates, tax options, and checkout behavior in a clean, organized interface.
Each area uses the same modern design with powerful search and filtering—making it easy to find what you need fast.
Settings: Everything You Need, Nothing You Don’t
Imagely has always given you comprehensive control over your galleries—default thumbnail sizes, lightbox effects, watermarking, image protection, and more. All those powerful settings are still here, but now you’ll find a clear, simple interface to configure them.
Gone are the days of hunting through nested menus and tabs. The new settings interface features:
- Clean sidebar navigation with clear icons and labels
- Settings grouped by function (Image Options, Lightbox Effects, Image Animations, etc.)
- Modern design with helpful tooltips throughout
Every global setting you need is right where you’d expect to find it.
Layout Settings: Gallery Defaults Made Simple
One of Imagely’s most powerful features has always been the ability to set default settings for each gallery layout type. This feature is still here, but now it’s actually easy to use. Just click Layout Settings from the main Settings menu to access it.
- All available layouts listed in a clean sidebar
- See exactly which settings apply to each layout type
- Modern toggle switches and clear field labels
- “Reset to defaults” option when you need a fresh start
Set your preferences once for each layout, and every new gallery of that type will automatically use those defaults. You can still customize individual galleries as needed—these are just smart starting points that save you time.
Whether you’re configuring dimensions, enabling animations, setting up image protection, or fine-tuning lightbox behavior, the new Settings interface makes it straightforward to get Imagely working exactly the way you want.
A Modern Interface That Feels Right at Home
Beyond the workflow improvements, we’ve given the entire plugin a visual refresh. Clean typography, consistent spacing, intuitive navigation, and logical groupings make everything easier to find and use.
The best part? All your existing galleries, albums, settings, and customizations work exactly as they did before. This is a better Imagely, not a different one.
The Imagely Block: A Better Builder, Right in Your Editor
You can still insert galleries and albums using shortcodes if that’s your preference, but most users work directly with the Imagely block in the WordPress editor. And now, that block experience mirrors the same streamlined interface you’ll find throughout the plugin.
The Imagely block gives you everything you need right where you’re working:
- Quick search to find the gallery or album you want
- Toggle between Gallery and Album tabs
- Insert existing galleries or create new ones on the fly
- Edit galleries directly from the block editor—no need to navigate away from your post
When you create or edit a gallery from the Imagely block, you get the exact same streamlined builder experience as the main gallery management area—complete with the 3-step workflow, live preview, and all your customization options.
The new Imagely plugin is a smooth, intuitive experience whether you’re managing galleries in the admin area or building content in your posts and pages.
Available Now: Just Update Your Plugin
The new Imagely experience is live and ready for you to explore. If you’re an existing user, simply update your plugin from your WordPress dashboard. That’s it!
What you’ll notice immediately:
- Cleaner navigation in your WordPress admin
- Modern, professional interface throughout
- Faster workflows for common tasks
- All your existing content and settings intact
New to Imagely? There’s never been a better time to experience the most powerful WordPress gallery and eCommerce solution for photographers. Get started today!
We can’t wait to see how this update helps you work faster, create better galleries, and grow your photography business with less friction. Have an idea to make Imagely even better? Let us know with a feature request!
As always, if you have questions or need help getting started with the new interface, our support team is here for you. And if you love the update, we’d love to hear about it! Feel free to shoot us a message or drop a comment below.
Looking for more photography tips and WordPress tutorials? Check out our blog!



“What used to take 10–15 minutes now takes 3 minutes. Same powerful features, zero confusion.”
I’m sorry, but for anyone who actually uses NextGEN professionally, this is simply not true.
Yes — the new UI is maybe simpler, fancier, very click-friendly and drag-and-drop-everything, all on one page, almost idiot-proof. It probably does feel easier for beginners or casual users.
But for users who have worked with NextGEN for years, managing dozens of galleries and hundreds of images, this redesign is a clear downgrade.
Now, once you upload images to galleries:
– basic everyday tasks require more clicks
– metadata is hidden behind menus
– sorting is less precise and more frustrating
– critical options in galerry settings are gone
What used to take 3 minutes now takes 10–15 in real, professional workflows.
Hi Lidija, thank you for taking the time to share this. We really appreciate hearing from Imagely users with real, high-volume workflows.
The new Imagely interface is built on a brand-new foundation designed to make galleries easier to create and manage long-term, but we understand that some advanced workflows may feel less direct right now compared to the legacy UI.
We’re actively improving the new interface to make sure long-time users get the same level of control and efficiency they rely on, just within a cleaner, more modern experience. Several of the items you mentioned, like metadata visibility and more precise sorting, are already on our roadmap, and I’ve passed your feedback on to our developers.
If you have questions or would like to share more specific feedback, feel free to contact support or submit a feature request. Thanks again for your honest input.
I might just be a bit dense but I miss the possibility to add images by tags with the new Imagely Blocks. Did you change the concept of galleries and albums? Or am I the only one using tags for galleries in blog posts or pages?
Hi Dierk, thanks for flagging this! You’re definitely not the only one using tags this way, and we know it’s an important part of how many people organize and display their galleries.
The new Imagely blocks are built on a reworked gallery and album system, so some tag-based workflows may behave a bit differently as part of this transition. Our support team is already reaching out to you directly to help get you set up and make sure your use case is covered.
Thanks again for bringing this up — feedback like this helps us make sure the new system supports all the ways people actually use Imagely.
In one word: horrible.
It looks better, but I lost tools like editing images in bulk, in the menu the ‘add images’ is gone. Cannot download the images.
All images are shown as thumbnails instead of a list with fields as ‘title’, ‘description’ and ‘tags’ with enabled me to copy and paste data. Now I have top close the image, open another one, back and repeat.
If I want to copy an image to another album, I see a list of albums but cannot search an album. Instead I have stopped scroll the whole list of albums.
Please tell me that I am wrong.
Hi Ron, thanks for being candid about your experience. We know the shift to the new Imagely interface was a big change, especially for high-volume users who are familiar with the legacy UI.
I do want to clarify one important thing: bulk editing hasn’t been removed. It’s still available in the new interface — you just need to select one or more galleries or images first, and the Bulk Actions menu appears once something is selected (both on the Galleries page and inside a gallery).
Many of the other things you mentioned, like metadata visibility, easier copying between albums, and better ways to search large collections, are areas we’re actively improving as we continue to build on the new system, and I’ve passed your feedback on to our developers.
If you have questions or want to share more specifics, feel free to contact support or submit a feature request. We really appreciate your input — feedback like this directly helps shape what we prioritize next.
It’s not as simple as you’re making it out to be. If you want to move a photo to another gallery using the “Move to” command, you’ll see all your galleries. So you have to scroll through them all to find the right one. There’s not even an option to search for a gallery, which used to be available.
The same goes for tags. You can’t search for them either.
This is a crappy update!
Hi Theo, thanks for adding that context.
We understand that when you’re managing large libraries, the ability to quickly search when moving images and narrow down galleries by tags is important. We’re actively working on library-management improvements as we continue building on the new system, and I’ve passed your feedback on to our developers and logged both items as feature requests.
If you have questions or want to share more specifics, feel free to contact support or submit a feature request.