Enrico Sorcinelli

Feature Image Extended extends featured image functionality allowing:
<ul>
<li>Hiding featured image in your themes for all post types.</li>
<li>Adding link to the featured image.</li>
<li>Adding thumbnail featured image in administration screens listing.</li>
<li>Featured image quick-editing.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Usage</h3>
Once the plugin is installed you can control settings in the following ways:
<ul>
<li>Programmatically by using <code>featured_image_extended_settings</code> filter (see below).</li>
<li>Using the Settings->Featured Image Extended administration screen.</li>
</ul>
If your theme uses a different call other than <code>the_post_thumbnail()</code>/<code>get_the_post_thumbnail()</code> in order to get the featured image, this plugin might not work. 
So, in order to get extended featured image settings and apply to your pages, you should use <code>featured_image_extended()</code> (see below).
<h3>API</h3>
<code>featured_image_extended( integer $post_id = null )</code>
It returns an array containing featured image extended information of <code>$post_id</code> post (or current post if you don’t supply an argument) like following:
<pre><code>array(
 'show' => true,
 'url' => 'https://myurl.com',
 'target' => '_blank',
 'title' => 'Image title',
)
</code></pre>
<h4>Hooks</h4>
<code>featured_image_extended_settings</code>
Filter plugin settings values.
<pre><code>apply_filters( 'featured_image_extended_settings', array $settings )
</code></pre>
<code>featured_image_extended_admin_settings</code>
Filter allowing to display or not the plugin settings page in the administration.
<pre><code>apply_filters( 'featured_image_extended_admin_settings', boolean $display )
</code></pre>

Featured Image Extended

Feature Image Extended extends featured image builtin functionality.

One Crayon

Markup to Featured Image will automatically generate a featured image when you publish a post, with the intent of allowing you to publish posts with featured images from third-party clients like MarsEdit.
To add a featured image to your post, include one of the following markup variants in your post’s content:
<pre><code><img src="/path/to/image.jpg" data-featured-image="keep" />
<img src="/path/to/image.jpg" data-featured-image="strip" />

</code></pre>
If you use an <code><img></code> element, the values of the <code>data-featured-image</code> attribute specify whether the image should be displayed when the post is shown on your site (<code>keep</code>) or ignored when the post is displayed (<code>strip</code>). The order of attributes in your <code><img></code> tag (and whether you include other attributes, like width/height, title, alt, etc.) doesn’t matter. You can make it as complicated or simple as you like.
If the post already has a featured image, the plugin will do nothing (version 1.0 does not allow updating the thumbnail by updating the markup).

Markup to Featured Image

Automatically set the featured image (formerly the post thumbnail) for a post based on custom markup in the body text.

Featured Image Extended vs Markup to Featured Image