...sounds like a rather complicated process with no advantage over making thumbs one-by-one in you graphic software...
I'm more lazy and use
Thumbs PLUS - it does everything (except cropping - as far as I know):
· it keeps a database of all my images with thumbnails (a
lot smaller than the built-in Windows option or other programs)
· you can even add images in a zip file to your thumbnail database
and copy them straight into a seperate directory (no need to un-zip)
· bulk rename groups of images
· enables me to run batch processes for selected images (things like resize, gamma-correction and apply higher compression)
· and it creates thumbnails with html table for selected images. And it does a decent job: you can set the pixels size and compression (70-75% image quality gives you thumbnail files of under 4kb with no visible sign of compression), the images are automatically enhanced in contrast and saturation, and the table is easy to insert into you page template (though: I run a custom vb script over the out-put because I don't like the long file names and shorten the code, too)
