Took me a little while, but buried in a thread I find this jewel of a tip by Chris, so I'm posting it. And I quote Chris:
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...try this code in your child theme's functions.php:function childtheme_content($content) {
if (is_category()) {
$content= 'full';}
return $content;
}add_filter('thematic_content', 'childtheme_content');
Chris "
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What it does:
When users click on the blog categories (which I use for navigation), the result shows full posts, images and all, instead of post excerpts (default). This is particularly useful for someone who uses this theme as a portfolio (nothing like having users follow Categories, only to find a list of uninformative links without images).
I imagine a variation for blogs with lots of content would be excerpts with at least an image, but this is pretty cool. Thanks Chris!