Sharing photo albums over home network

[Le Big Mac]

One used to be able to "home share" photos over a home network - i.e., I could share my Photos (app) albums with my spouse and she could view those photos. Now that can only be done via iCloud photo sharing, which is nice and good for anyone who doesn't have a massive photo library or who is willing to pay an ongoing monthly fee to store loads and loads of photos.

So, I'm looking for suggested solutions - any software I can buy that approximates the old home sharing approach?

Alternatively, is it viable to set up a network shared album hosted on an external drive? I have a reasonably robust wired network, and could either put the album on an external drive connected to my time capsule or one of my computers. I realize simultaneous access to the album won't work, but otherwise is this a potential solution?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

There may be some apps that do local network sharing, but just wanted to point out that iCloud shared albums do not count against your iCloud storage, and while there are limits to what you can share they're pretty generous. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202299 explains more, it works really well for me.