av shortcodes in post

Hello,

I am looking for a way to ease up my photography blog.
I noticed the following:
– when you use the layout builder in a blog post, you lose some blogging functionalities like categories and comments etc.
– when you do not use the layout builder in a blog post, you can still use some shortcodes like av_masonry_gallery. But as it is displayed as shortcode in the editor, it is difficult to change something (you have to know the parameters and values, or redo the gallery) and images are listed by id in the shortcode

Is there a way to either:
– attach the images to the post, and let them be automatically displayed ? (like the featured image) and like it is done in the https://wordpress.org/plugins/photography-portfolio/ (i prefer not to use another plugin in order to keep the site as light as possible, and it does not have as much choices for changing the display of the gallery)
– make the shortcode easily editable through the standard editor (for adding an image for example)
– change the default values of the shortcode, so that it is easier to add one and keep consistancy

Thanks in advance,
Sara