I’m using linked images to show them in my blog posts (from external sources Flickr, Picasa). If technically possible, I would like to see a functionality in the Theme that an image from the blog post is automatically set as featured image, even though it is linked (in this case a local copy would need to be created).
Again this might be a wishfull thought but maybe there is a possibility to do such things.
If you post as an image post format, the excepts on the grid will use the image (as if it were a featured image). The problem with this, though, is that clicking on the image on the excerpt won’t go to the post. It will open the image in a lightbox.