tinyMce wrapps img with p tags

I know this is an issue that crops up regularly but I have tried every plugin, suggestion and hack without success.

I want tinyMce to create p tags for a carriage return but not for when an image is inserted. It messes up my markup/css.

I’ve tried to set the property valid_children : “-p[img]” which should tell the editor that img tags should not be a child of a p tag but it doesn’t work.

It should work with tinyMCE v3.4+ which is the version I have but I think it must be a special tailored version for wordpress.

This is such a frustrating issue to deal with and I’ve wasted days trying to resolve it. Any help is appreciated.