In the permissions controls, it seems to be the default that images and links can only be seen by admins unless you manually change it.

Is it possible for me to change the default permissions? I don't want to have to go through and manually change them each time.

Nopes, the default permissions would be set that way only.

By what I know, most forums don't want links and images to be only viewable by Admins, and therefore it should not be a default setting as default settings should be set for the most popular setting.

What reasoning was behind setting it to Admins-only? Might wanna review that.

You can make a suggestion about it.
Solved?

Yup, solved.