Metadata in loops

Question

I have a standard Wordpress loop displaying items:

     $loop = new WP_Query( array( 
            'post_type' => 'images',   
            'orderby' => 'menu_order',
             ) );

   while ( $loop->have_posts() ) : $loop->the_post(); 

   /* loop code, HTML mostly, a few if statements, nothing special */

   endwhile;

Now I want to display CERTAIN data from meta boxes and here comes the trouble.

the_meta() works just fine, but get_post_meta() doesn't work at all.

Why is this happening? Any fixes? I need to do something like get_post_meta($post->ID, 'metabox_field', true).

Any ideas?

[update]

Alright. More details.

I have a custom post type called "images".

Each image item has it's own metabox with a few fields inside, let's call them image_date, image_author, copyrights.

I want to display image author from field called image_author, so:

<?php 
    $author = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'image_author', true); 
    echo $author;
?>

The problem is it works ONLY when I open SINGLE image (single-image.php), but doesn't in loop (and I want to display this data for each item in loop also).

The_meta() works in both places if it changes something.

My loop looks exactly as above.

I guess that's all :)

Answer 1

get_post_meta() function works In and Outside of the loop and you saying that you do see it working on a single image "but doesn't in loop" means that you probably did not add the code to the right loop.

To be clear It works with all posts types.