My thumbnail images are still too large on load-time

I looked under thumbnail images on the forums but couldn't find an answer. Sorry if this is redundant.

ZenCart likes to create thumbnails from the original images. Unfortunately, the images I'm using are higher-rez (they're of sheet music covers) so the thumbnails are much larger in file-size than they need to be. My optimization software is telling me to reduce the resolution on my thumbnail images, which means I'd have to lower the rez on the originals. Is there any way around this ?

Thanks.

Have you tried image handler?
It's great for improving image loading speed.
You can find it in the free add-ons section.

on my site whatever dimension i have my thumnails set to, i make the approx that size too, and then i create another one much higher in pixel width with _LRG on the end of the name, so that when a user click for a larger view they see my high res image.

loading time on my site is fast, as my images are the size that you are looking at them

Rob