To my mind things like that kind of functionality are actually plugin territory and there is a solution here: http://code.google.com/p/buddypress-media/ – be worth checking out.
It’s needed by pretty much everyone, and hence really a “core” feature.
WP already has some image processing built in that BP could/should leverage. As a member of a social network, I should be able to create my own albums, add photos and videos to them and tag friends and places. That much is really core. (including automatic resizing and lossless compression, and post upload of photos/videos to activity stream)
If BuddyPress Media is good, perhaps it can be merged back into BP core?
Further functionality, such as watermarking, CDN support, user notifications, comments, are probably plugin territory.
One day, there might be a hook up to WP media but until then it really is better to allow people options with functionality via plugins. Be thankful the BP media team has spent thousands of hours giving you that free option 
@sooskriszta – we should have an announcement shortly on a new photo solution for BP – that as you recognise should and does leverage the built in WP capability
Good call to everyone’s post on this thread. We develop online communities as opposed to social media networks. Our site members do not want a media feature. Yet it would be great to see it integrated into a future BP release. Maybe, private groups can have the option of using it?
Eric
@modemlooper I am grateful to the BP team. Doesn’t make my request unreasonable.
@rogercoathup Bated breath, etc
@sooskriszta check out https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-media/ by rtcamp; not to be confused with the other BP Media hosted on Google
@mercime Thanks a bunch. Looks good on the face of it. Will try.
I’ve gotta say, though, that it is a bit irritating that many BP plugin contributors don’t upload screenshots. By contrast, for WP, I find most plugins do have screenshots.
Oh, well, I guess I can’t complain in that they are giving away their time and effort for free. It’s just that it would be nice if thousands of others didn’t have to put in too much additional time and effort in order to decide whether they want the plugin or not…
Good luck. I use BP Gallery myself
I can understand how some people could get confused to what the best solution is because you have bp-album, bp-media, bp-gallery, bp-media component etc. and it would be awesome if the most fully featured of the media plugins was either integrated or somehow auto-suggested in the BuddyPress install. Anyway, that is just my opinion, and I think it would save a little confusion for those that are new to BuddyPress.
Yup, would be good if BP developers pick one of these and merge it into the core.
Photos can’t be an afterthought. Media is a part of even the WP core.
