Milan Dinić

<a href="http://blog.milandinic.com/wordpress/plugins/descriptions-as-captions-in-galleries/" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin homepage</a> | <a href="http://blog.milandinic.com/" rel="nofollow ugc">Plugin author</a> | <a href="http://blog.milandinic.com/donate/" rel="nofollow ugc">Donate</a>
Image descriptions are stored as content (field <code>post_content</code>) while captions are stored as excerpt (field <code>post_excerpt</code>). This means that descriptions are shown on single attachment pages, while captions are shown in <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Gallery_Shortcode" rel="nofollow ugc">galleries</a> and if image is embedded in a post content with a <code>[caption]</code> shortcode.
If you use images just in galleries, in order to have text below image in both places, you need to fill both fields.
This plugin changes that. You only fill description field and that text is used as caption of image in galleries.
There are no options or settings, just enable plugin and everything works automatically.

Descriptions as Captions in Galleries

Show image descriptions as captions in galleries.

Zack Katz

<blockquote>WordPress 3.4 Supports HTML in Captions! 
Basic HTML support has been added to the caption field in the image uploader. This allows you to add links – great for photo credits or licensing details – and basic formatting such as bold and italicized text.
</blockquote>
<h3>For WordPress 3.3.2 and earlier…finally you can add links to your image captions.</h3>
Adding links to captions is the <a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/view/top-rated" rel="nofollow ugc">9th most popular request</a> in the WordPress Ideas forum.
With this plugin, you can also use <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Shortcode_API" rel="nofollow ugc">shortcodes</a> in captions.
<h4>How to use</h4>
Inside the <code>caption</code> input, you can now add a link by using the following format: <code>{a href="http://www.example.com"}Anchor text here{/a}</code>, or alternatively you could use <code>{link url="http://www.example.com"}Anchor text here{/link}</code>.
You can also specify <code>target</code>, <code>title</code>, and <code>rel</code> attributes: <code>{link url="http://www.example.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" title="I never could do this before!"}Anchor text here{/link}</code>
<blockquote>
<h4>You may also be interested in:</h4>
<a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rich-text-tags/" rel="ugc">Rich Text Tags</a> – Enable rich text editing of tags, categories, and taxonomies. Add value to your tag & category pages and improve your website’ SEO.
</blockquote>

Links in Captions

Easily add links to image captions in the WordPress editor.

Descriptions as Captions in Galleries vs Links in Captions