humjay

I solved this by using some regex in my template to detect if the output was a full image tag or just a url like so:

if( get_post_meta($post->ID, 'images')):
$images = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'images'); 

foreach($images as $image):
if(strpos($image, "<img") !== FALSE):
  preg_match('/src=[\"\']([^\"\']+)/i', $image, $matches);
  $imageurl = $matches[1];
else:
  $imageurl = $image;
endif;

You can then use the imageurl variable wherever you need the source. This code will let someone just paste in the url or use the media library to insert a full image.