What would be the right Gallery Module for Social Networking Communities?

Perhaps you should describe what you want to do with the gallery.

I'm going through this right now and I'll tell you what... I've struggled with it.

In the end, (I think) I'm using the user profile image for the user profile. I'm using the User Gallery module for the user galleries and I'm writing a custom module to move an image selected by the user (from his User Gallery) as "default" to the user profile image. I'm also using the CCK image field and taxonomy for other galleries on the site to which users can contribute.

Wordy explanation:
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My requirements:

1. Allow easy and direct upload of images (not through Content->Add)
2. Allow easy association of images with users (in any view like, "Latest User Images")
3. Allow setting a default image as the profile image.
4. Provide a default image if the user hasn't uploaded one for his profile.
(5) I also want public image galleries that users can contribute to (i.e. "Upload your car pictures" - or whatever)

I played with just about every gallery and image module I found.

In the end I threw them all out and planned to just use the CCK Image field on a content-type called Image, with just that one field. Then, my plan was to use a Taxonomy field of "User Gallery" to be able to list the users' pictures in a view.

I used the same thing for the public galleries only each of those gets its own Taxonomy term and I'm making custom forms with the taxonomy preset and hidden for simple, contextual upload - just a button "Upload Image" on the gallery page that leads to a form that just has an upload widget and the taxonomy for the specific gallery hidden.

So my last problem was allowing the user to be able to choose an image from his own gallery as his profile image. This is my last hurtle.

Incidentally, I tried the "Image Gallery" module and that does nearly all of what I've done with the CCK Image field but its content type has its image field hidden which prevents me from formatting the images any way I want and what I've done is equal.

I planned to use a Flag (from the Flag module) called "Default Image" and use a custom form to allow the user to set the flag on one of his images. However, this turned into a nightmare with views because I had to use Views Fusion to fuse (using Nodeprofile and Advanced Profile) usernode, uprofile and my image node. Well Views Fusion has a problem (bug?) allowing an Image field in the right (third) fused view and I couldn't get the selection right by making the fusion with the image view first... because the left most or first view is the one that determines the layout of the fields. Also, I was having a hard time figuring out how to provide for a default user profile image if the user hadn't selected one.

So, to make a long story longer, I'm going to use the User Gallery module and use hook_form_alter and write a new module to make the selected image the profile image. Using the user profile image has the advantage of easily allowing for a default image if the user doesn't choose one.