Gallery Image Captions (GIC) allows you to customise WordPress gallery image captions.
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.
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.
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 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.
For starters, let’s use a
<p></p>
tag for the caption tag.
[gallery size="full" columns="1" link="file" ids="114" captiontag="p"]
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; }
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.
/* 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; }
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; } }
/wp-content/plugins/PLUGIN-NAME
directory, or install the plugin through the WordPress Plugins page directly.WordPress Gallery Before GIC
WordPress Gallery Before GIC
Displaying title, caption, and description with moody styling using GIC
More styling examples using GIC: centre justified text and even using blockquote styling
With GIC, you can even insert links to the image file and attachment Page!
Write media queries to control how to display captions for different devices
Responsive for mobile displays
Another example of displaying title, caption, and description with moody styling using GIC
Washington Post style captions using GIC
Vogue style captions using GIC
Media Library Image ID column to help with writing GIC shortcodes. Since in v1.2.0.
Custom field support. New in v1.4.0.
Media attachment details with 2 custom fields for photographer credits.
Here’s the list of metadata with their array index you can insert into your captions.
Starting with version 1.4.0, you can pull custom media attachment fields right into your captions!
As of v1.2.0, you can hit the list icon in your Media Library and a sortable column of image IDs will display on the far right. This is much easier and faster than manually (see below) looking them up if you have a lot of images for your gallery.
You can also manually find the image post IDs by selecting the image in the Media Library and hovering over the Edit link. You’ll need to visually pick out the post=85
for example in the URL preview.
galimgcaps_image_meta
filter to support custom media attachment fields.