ffd8

Solved the problem [ignore wrong ‘remove_filter’ above]! It seems to be true that when doing attachments/images query, it ignores all filtering of categories I threw at it… Instead, one can ask for the image object’s post_parent, then do an in_category() test to exclude the ones to be ignored:

$ads = array(2,4); // list of cats to exclude
$media_query = new WP_Query(array(
  	'post_type' => 'attachment',
	'post_mime_type' =>'image',
	'post_status' => 'inherit',
	'posts_per_page' => -1,
));

foreach ($media_query->posts as $post) {
	if (!in_category($ads, $post->post_parent)){
		$img = wp_get_attachment_image_src($post->ID, $imgSize)[0];
		echo '<img src="'.$img.'" id="">';
	}
}

Hope that helps someone trying to scrape their images too…