How to load products media gallery along with the collection?

In case anyone’s looking for another approach on this, I found this to work (in just one case so no guarantees!):

Be sure to do $collection->addAttributeToSelect(’image’); first, then when looping through the collection products, do:

$attributes = $product->getTypeInstance(true)->getSetAttributes($product);
$media_gallery = $attributes[’media_gallery’];
$backend = $media_gallery->getBackend();
$backend->afterLoad($product); //this loads the media gallery to the product object

Not sure if all of this is necessary but I’m in a hurry. In my particular case I was trying to get the image url using $product->getImageUrl(); and this approach worked for me.

Hope it helps someone else.

I had to do the same recently, fastest method:

class My_Module_Block_Name extends Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_View_Abstract
{

/** @var null|Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Attribute */
protected static $_mediaGalleryBackend = null;

public function getGalleryImages()
{
    $product = $this->getProduct();
    $this->_getBackend()->afterLoad($product);
    $collection = $product->getMediaGalleryImages();

    return $collection;
}


/**
 * @return Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Attribute
 */
protected function _getBackend() {
    if (self::$_mediaGalleryBackend === null) {

        $mediaGallery = Mage::getSingleton('eav/config')
            ->getAttribute(Mage_Catalog_Model_Product::ENTITY, 'media_gallery');

        self::$_mediaGalleryBackend = $mediaGallery->getBackend();
    }

    return self::$_mediaGalleryBackend;
}

}

try this

$collection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection()
                        ->addStoreFilter($storeId)
                        ->addAttributeToSelect(array('image', 'media_gallery'))
                        ->addAttributeToFilter('status', Mage_Catalog_Model_Product_Status::STATUS_ENABLED);
foreach ($collection as $product) {
    var_dump($product->getMediaGallery());
}

It can be used directly in loop:

foreach ($collection as $product) {
    $product->getResource()->getAttribute('media_gallery')->getBackend()->afterLoad($product);
    foreach ($product->getMediaGalleryImages() as $image) {
        var_dump($image->debug());
    }
}