How To Auto-Number Each IMG in a Post?

Hello,

I am running a entertainment site in which galleries of images are the main content… We need to figure out how to number each photo kind of like thechive.com does on each gallery they post. What is cool about them is they have intensedebate compatible with their system so when someone types #4, the fourth image will show up in their comment. I was thinking about writing a code with PHP that will find each img in the post, auto-increment a number and echo it before the images, but if someone knows of a better way to go about it please let me know.. Any ideas?

THANKS! ??