making thumbnails

[Chris Sharman]

Any good free tools for making thumbnail pages ?

I've got html-kit, which does a perfect job on the html using insert file
with custom code.
I've got irfanview, which can do everything I need, but doesn't in batch
mode - in batch mode it scales all pictures to fit in a square grey box -
I'd rather they were picture-shaped and sized. I can do that by resizing
individually, but that takes a while.

Thanks,
Chris