Here's my two penny worth on the issue of a gallery within CB.
First, I used Nants plugin, only to find that issues arose, and having searched here on the forum for some kind of solution, it became a nightmare, therefore the simple answer was to uninstall the Nant's plugin and seek out an alternative. On he plus side, I think the user options that are available are great, meaning that the end user has the ability to decide who gets to view their pictures.
Next I tried, joomgallery, this I liked, the gallery layout appears very nicely, and there was issues with images not showing like there was with Nant's gallery. However, the drawbacks for the project I work on is that there are no user options like there are in Nant's gallery, and some users may not want to allow their pictures for public viewing. Allowing the user to decide is essential within a community.
I liked what I read of Mike's simgallery and the fact that it allows the user to decide who gets to view their images. however, the draw backs being the cost of the application, and the fact that I took it for a test drive on Mike's site, only to find that the test pictures I uploaded never appeared. Though, they could be waiting on an admin approval, I haven't been back to check, and it also appears that the images already up on his site function okay within the Rockettheme template.
I am now in the midst of trying out RS2gallery, as it appears that there is a plugin of sorts for CB, only time will tell as to how this works out.
Overall, I have to agree with other posters on this thread, an image galley with interactive user functionality is in my opinion an essential factor within a community. Therefore, I'd like to see a much improved cbgallery plugin, ideally Nant's gallery, because of the user options, and the simplicity of it's use, but please get it to work properly with mootools and lightbox etc.
Ps, if anyone knows of another gallery that works well with CB, please share that info, it would be very much appreciated.
tia
Paul.