Two weeks ago at the TC Drupal meeting, then again this past week at Lab Hours, the issue of using Drupal to create and maintain an image gallery came up. The general agreement amongst attendees at both gatherings was that using CCK, Imagefield, Imagecache and Views is the way to go but that no configuration of such was making everyone happy.
Over the weekend I ran into an online video from <http://www.theartlab.net> that outlines a simple but elegant and handsome way of tackling an image gallery in Drupal using CCK, Imagefield, Imagecache and Views with the addition of a module called ThickBox which displays the gallery's images in a translucent pageable box over the thumbnail view. It's not the perfect solution -- no bulk upload of images -- but handles the basics very well.
Even if you are not interested in a gallery, per se, the ace in the hole of this approach is its use of the View Type of Bonus: Grid View. This view option is available if you enable the Views Bonus Pack module. This creates the type of display grid (4 across is the default) that I know some of us were thinking necessitated CSS magic. This View seems to do all the work without any outside CSS changes necessary.
In any case, if you are interested, the video is less than 20 minutes long and available here: http://www.theartlab.net/podcast/drupal-school?page=1. There's a threaded discussion underneath the podcast post that may be useful. Note that there is a longer version of the tutorial which adds some information-- like how to change the default of 4-across for the Grid View (although this info is available elsewhere).
So, if this is germane to your work, check it out. There are other decent video tutorials on this same site. Scroll through them to see if others deal with issues you with to explore..
-barry
-advantage labs
P.S. I have not yet implemented the methods shown in the video, but expect to soon. I'll update the list if I find anything worth reporting.