[SOLVED] sad lack of satisfactory “image handling” -- image alignment driving me bonk

Image alignment is driving me bonkers. I publish print articles at least once a month, and since the rights revert to me I try to put them on my site, using thumbnail images to link to articles. But since the magazines in which I publish have slightly different sizes, and the titles vary in length, it takes me hours to adjust the thumbnails so that they align left, one after the other, rather than leaving one dangling by itself when the screen is resized. http://www.boldizar.com/blog/nonfiction/

Jim at http://wordpress.bytesforall.com/?p=67#comments wrote me back saying: “I’m with you completely on the sad lack of satisfactory “image handling” ..though, I’d encompass the whole WordPress scene and not just zero in on Atahualpa. You might consider either locking the width of your site or, at least, setting min and max widths. I’m noticing a lot more fixed width sites these days. Another cure might be to look into having your thumbnails and comments handled by a plugin such as NextGen Gallery or somesuch. I’d suggest asking questions at the Atahualpa forum at BytesForAll — there are A LOT of Atahualpa users and some of them are very clever AND helpful!“

Neither locking the widths nor using a gallery are optimal solutions for me. Is there no way to simply have the images-with-captions stack left one after the other?

I would be grateful for any advice!!