Gallery Image Captions (GIC)

With GIC, you can display the title, caption, and description image attributes. You can also change/filter the rendering HTML to whatever you want.

After installing and activating GIC, write your filter and add the WordPress Gallery shortcode to your page.

If you’ve been dreaming of writing a filter to customise the gallery image captions, then this plugin is for you.

Visit the live demo page.

Motivation

The default WordPress gallery shortcode will only display the caption from the media’s attachment metadata. Sometimes it’s nice to display more like the title—even the description.

The GIC plugin overrides the WordPress gallery shortcode function to create a hook. With this hook you can do a little bit more than just displaying the caption.

Some premium themes hide the caption completely. This leaves photography lovers like me scratching their head and spending precious time cobbling together makeshift caption blocks.

Usage

Custom Filter For Displaying Captions

The crux of this plugin is the ability to filter the gallery image caption. The galimgcaps_gallery_image_caption hook makes this possible.

For the usage examples below, this is the filter used.

/**
 * Custom Filter for Gallery Image Captions
 *
 * Note: Avoid altering captiontag, selector, and itemtag.
 */
function mlc_gallery_image_caption($attachment_id, $captiontag, $selector, $itemtag) {

    $id = $attachment_id;

    // Grab the meta from the GIC plugin.
    $my_image_meta = galimgcaps_get_image_meta($id);

    /**
     * Here's where to customise the caption content.
     * 
     * This example uses the meta title, caption, and description. 
     * 
     * You can display any value from the $my_image_meta array. 
     * You can add your own HTML too.
     */
    return "<{$captiontag} class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='{$selector}-{$id}'>" .
            "Title: " . $my_image_meta['title'] . "<br>" .
            "Caption: " . $my_image_meta['caption'] . "<br>". 
            "Description: ". $my_image_meta['description'] . 
        "</{$captiontag}></{$itemtag}>";

}
add_filter('galimgcaps_gallery_image_caption', 'mlc_gallery_image_caption', 10, 4);

Feel free to use this filter code as a starter template. After activating the GIC plugin, add the code above to your child theme’s functions.php file. Rename the function and tweak the return string to suit your needs.

New Filter To Get Custom Fields

/**
 * New GIC 1.4.0 filter for custom meta fields.
 */
function gic_add_custom_fields( $image_meta, $attachment ) {

    // This is how you add a custom fields to the array that
    // GIC uses to display captions.
    $image_meta['credit_text'] = $attachment->credit_text;
    $image_meta['credit_link'] = $attachment->credit_link;

    return $image_meta;
}
add_filter( 'galimgcaps_image_meta', 'gic_add_custom_fields', 10, 2 );

To use these two custom fields, your galimgcaps_gallery_image_caption would look something like this.

function mlc_gallery_image_caption($attachment_id, $captiontag, $selector, $itemtag) {

    $id = $attachment_id;

    // Grab the meta from the GIC plugin.
    $my_image_meta = galimgcaps_get_image_meta($id);

    // If there's credit, give it where it's due complete with link.
    $credit = $my_image_meta['description'] ? 
        "<br><strong>Credit</strong>: <a style='display: inline;' href='" . 
        $my_image_meta['credit_link'] . 
        "'>" . $my_image_meta['credit_text'] . "</a>" . "<br>" : 
        '';

    /**
     * With GIC 1.4.0 you can also add custom media attachment fields
     * to your captions.
     */
    return "<{$captiontag} class='wp-caption-text gallery-caption' id='{$selector}-{$id}'>" .
            "<strong>Caption</strong>: " . $my_image_meta['caption'] . "<br>" . 
            $credit .
            "</{$captiontag}></{$itemtag}>";

}
add_filter('galimgcaps_gallery_image_caption', 'mlc_gallery_image_caption', 10, 4);

Since v1.2.0, GIC automatically adds an Image ID column to your WordPress Media Library. This is to help you add the image IDs to your GIC shortcodes.

See where GIC automatically adds an Image ID column to your WordPress Media Library.

New in v1.4.0, GIC support custom media attachment fields.

Usage Example 1

Shortcode

For starters, let’s use a

<p></p> 

tag for the caption tag.

[gallery size="full" columns="1" link="file" ids="114" captiontag="p"]

Styling

Let’s override the generated styles with our own style for one particular image.

/* Targeting a Specific Image */

/* Add some padding all around. */
#gallery-1 .gallery-item, 
#gallery-1 .gallery-item p {
    padding: 1%;
}

/* Add some moody background with typewriter font. */
#gallery-1 .gallery-item {
    color: whitesmoke;
    background-color: black;
    font-size: 1.25rem;
    font-family: Courier, monospace;
    text-align: left !important;
}

Usage Example 2

Shortcode

A 2 column x 1 row gallery with large size images using an H4 for the caption.

[gallery size="large" columns="2" link="file" ids="109,106" captiontag="h4"]

A 3 column x 1 row gallery with medium size images using a blockquote for the caption.

[gallery size="medium" columns="3" link="file" ids="109,106,108" captiontag="blockquote"]

Did you notice that we are using

<blockquote></blockquote> 

in the second shortcode? Let’s give it try just for kicks.

Styling

/* 1. Style the H4 Used in the Caption Example */
h4 {
    color: #777777 !important;
    font-size: 1.2rem !important;
    font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif !important;
}

/* 2. Help Align the Blockquote */
#gallery-3 .gallery-caption {
    margin-left: 40px !important;
}

Responsive CSS Example

I recommend adding the following media queries if you use galleries with more than one image. The two media queries below will stack 2×1 and 3×1 galleries into a 1 column x n rows or 2 column x n rows as needed.

/* Media Queries for Responsive Galleries */

/**
 * Styling based on article "How To: Style Your WordPress Gallery"
 * by Par Nicolas.
 * 
 * https://theme.fm/how-to-style-your-wordpress-gallery/
 */

/* Mobile Portrait Breakpoint - 1 column */
@media only screen and (max-width: 719.998px) {
    .gallery-columns-2 .gallery-item,
    .gallery-columns-3 .gallery-item { 
     width: 100% !important; 
  }
}

/* Mobile Landscape and Tablet Breakpoints - 2 columns */
@media only screen and (min-width: 720px) and (max-width: 1024px) {
  .gallery-columns-3 .gallery-item { 
     width: 50% !important; 
  }
}