I am looking to have LARGER and cropped album thumbnails that are larger then the thumbnails within the album. is this possible? in other words, i want the album page to have a larger image then the thumbnails inside the album. when i change the thumbnail size in the options, it changes all the thumbs including the album page, which is not good.

We have a documentation: http://www.zenphoto.org/documentation-official/zenphoto/_template-functions.php.html#functionprintCustomAlbumThumbImage
You would have to change your index.php page and/or the `next_album`loop on album.php using them.

hmm i think i might just make a custom image for each album and link it up.

That is exactly what the function I linked to is for...

true. i had a look at that function and realized i dont know what to do with it at all. i can edit index.php and albums.php but when it comes to functions i dont know what to do. can you help me out?

It's really not that hard, but of course you need to get into it a little. Before I help directly would you mind to take a look at these here first?:
http://www.zenphoto.org/2008/04/how-to-read-the-zenphoto-functions-guide/
http://www.zenphoto.org/2008/05/theming-tutorial/

thanks for the links. very helpfull and i came up with this:

<a>" title="View album: <?php echo getAlbumTitle();?>"><?php printCustomAlbumThumbImage(getAlbumTitle(), null, 700, null, 662, 215); ?></a>

and it does what i want. now, just trying to figure out a good crop axis...