Photo Gallery Advice

I have just spent 3 hours downloading various plugins trying to find a simple FREE solution to display a grid of images that are different sizes with a caption always displayed (no mouse over effects wanted) and then when you click you can see a larger version of the same image.

So far I tried Supsystic, wp photo album plus, Huge IT, and a few others. I liked the Huge IT one best but they stretch and smash my photos to fit a standard image size and when I tried to change the general options they wanted to charge me so that was out. Wp Photo Album was way too complicated for what I want to do. Supsystic was pretty good but I couldn’t get the caption to always display, they force the use of roll over effects.

I’m way over my budget on this one now. Anyone have any suggestions on a good plugin. I looked over NextGEN but saw that the option I wanted would be a paid version. Thanks!