I have just upgraded three WordPress based blogs to version 2.5.1 by using an excellent plug-in for automatic upgrades. While I do not consider it the final solution (I think this should be a part of the basic WordPress set-up), it is certainly a big step in the right direction.
One of the things that got my attention in the new version is that it should load any EXIF info into special fields so that it can be used by templates to post caption, credits etc. I am really curious how to get this working and it seems more of this is coming in version 2.6 that is close to being released.
Of course, by using Windows Live Writer, one more step and possible error source is added between the original picture and the web page you see now. I added several IPTC fields to the picture just to see how it turned out and if it came up as useful data.
Do you have any experience in using these new data fields? Leave a comment and tell about how you did it. I will add to this article as I find out more.
Update: First of all, there is a bug in Windows Live Writer that strips out all EXIF/IPTC info. So it does not help using it if you want to have caption to the pictures. Version 2.5 of WordPress was supposed to add a better way to handle pictures, but for me the picture
The blue hour at Karmøy, Norway. (Photographer: Svein Wisnaes)
inserter/uploader never worked. But after upgrading to WordPress 2.6 things seem to work great. At least everything looks ok while I am in the editor. But for some reason the align tag does not work correct. So it ends up breaking the design.
There is also a nice and very tiny border around the picture that disappear on the way from the editor to the article that shows on the page, as well as some formatting I put on the caption. I wanted the Photographer to be in italics. It might be possible to fix this through the theme that is used. I will check if there is a more general fix for it.
