Add image field to articles in Joomla

I would like to add an image to each article but I do not want the image to be part of the article contents. I would like it to be a separate field like 'author' or 'created'. I believe this would allow the image to 开发者_如何学JAVAbe accessed separately by templates.

After a bit of research it looks like I will have to use an extension to do this.

Does anyone know of a solution that does not involve an extension?

If an extension is necessary, are there any that handle pictures really well?

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I use K2 in virtually even install we do. It has built in support for images like you are describing as well as the ability to define custom fields to suit any need you want. If you are familiar with Drupal's CCK, it's based on the same idea and works pretty much the same way. It's a complete replacement for Joomla's Section/Category/Article model.

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k2 is nice, but it adds quite a bit of other stuff (mostly useful I may add)

I was very disappointed to learn that joomla 1.6 doesn't have any tagging still which is a quite a big deal in web2 world. k2 for example does have this but isnt yet available for joomla 1.6.