Just change the bacground color on your recip table instead changing the recips themselves and that "problem" should be dealt and done with. And don't be afraid to let the recips stand out a lot on that page. It's not like you'll bleed big time traffick on them anyway, and I guess most LL owners would apreciate the fact that their recips is visible and in their original looks
After all their recips isn't something they've throw together just to have something on their submissions pages. I'm not an LL owner myself but I guess easy recognition and branding (or whatever it's called and probably means the same thing hehe) would be apropriate keywords.
And as BG said you should optimize those thumbs. I usually don't notice the quality of thumbs and pics like that but those thumbs are fussy or difuse or something in that neighbourhood. Might just be me that's fresh outta bed and not had enough coffe yet, and please do excuse my fuzzy atempt of a reply
