I'd like to modify the archive.php file to display a thumb along with the tag itself and I am looking for any ideas/pointers on how I might do this.

The reason for this is so that I can create virtual, tag-based albums, that pull together images from the various albums into theme-based albums. In a way, this capability is already present in the tag archive, except the archive does not display a thumb along with each tag.

So all I need to do is remove the dated archive part and somehow get a thumb image to associate with each tag.

I figure one way way to do this would be to modify the archive.php file and create a tagarchive.php page then and modify the printAllTags template function to create a new one - printAllTagsAsThumbs. The tagarchive.php page would display all tags as thumbs with the tag name under the thumb.

The next step would be to get a thumb for each tag, either as a random image for that tag, or the last image with that tag. This is the essential part and I do not yet see a way to do it.

I am not a php coder but I'd like to give it a try. I will post the result if it works out ok.

Do you know about the dynamic album feature that lets you create albums from searches and therefore also from tags?

Yes, I know about the searches and the tags but I don't know though how can I create a "virtual album" page consisting of thumbs for all the tags. What I want to do is display a "virtual gallery" that pulls images from various galleries, based on all the tags I have.
Then, when I click on the tag/thumb, I get the page consisting of ALL the thumbs for the given tag, then I can browse them. I know I can get the same thing indirectly, via the archive and its search links, but it is not the same as giving a page already loaded with all the tags and their thumbs.

I am just trying to be a bit more creative, instead of having the traditional textual tag cloud, I want to also have a tag/thumb cloud, so to speak.

Once I figure this part out, I can do a similar page for the dated archive: one page per year, one thumb per month, sort of like a photo calendar.

You need to create a two tier set of dynamic albums.

The lower tier would be a dynamic album for each tag. Tag these albums with a unique identifier--say 'thumbAlbum'.

Then for the top tier create a dynamic album from the search on 'thumbAlbum'. This will give you an album of the dynamic albums.

I guess the easiest, albeit not too elegant, way to do it is to hard code the tag search link and thumb for each tag in a page, then add a new entry in the template page each time I create a new tag. That would solve the problem, in a way.