I just thought I'd show my progress (or lack thereof) with batch image editing.
Irfanview does exactly what I'd like it to do. I can take as many files as I want as input, choose how I want to manipulate them, choose the output directory, then tell it to go and it does the rest. Here is the result:
Thumbnail made with PSP5:
Thumbnail made through a batch process on Irfanview:
Granted, it's a free program and a batch process, but that's just terrible quality! I find it unbelievable that it could mangle an image that badly. It did basically the same thing no matter what size I chose.
Remember, I didn't just need a thumbnail program. I needed something that would resize a large amount of pictures to whatever size I wanted, not just thumbnails.
This program can do neither.