Lost on how to grab image from post to create featured image.

I have been all over the place, different forums, talking with different people and I am not getting anythwere with this issue. So I think I just need to be very basic in explain what it is I want to acomplish and what I have been through.

1. I purchased this theme: http://themeforest.net/item/deadline-premium-wordpress-news-magazine-theme/117203

2. I use the WP syndicate plugin to grab posts from other blog (permission to do so of course) – The content from the post is copied locally but the permalink goes back to the originators page.

3. Through all of this I have tired using “Get The Image” plugin (which is very confussing for me to setup) – I could not get it to work, but it seemed like a good fit because it specifically states that it can scan posts for images and set that as the thumbnail (is that what I want to do?).

4. I was then told that why use a plugin if your theme supports this function. I was pointed to this page: http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/new-in-wordpress-2-9-post-thumbnail-images/

Upon following what it was telling me to do – I found that this was already in my themes functions.php file:

// Add support for WP 2.9 post thumbnails
if ( function_exists( 'add_theme_support' ) ) { // Added in 2.9
	add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
	set_post_thumbnail_size( 55, 55, true ); // Main theme thumbnails
	add_image_size( 'thumbnail-large', 75, 75, true ); // Large thumbnails
	add_image_size( 'thumbnail-wide', 300, 100, true ); // Wide thumbnails
	add_image_size( 'main-image', 285, 280, true ); // Main (latest) image
	add_image_size( 'main-image-pictures', 290, 280, true ); // Main (pictures) image
	add_image_size( 'lead-image', 460, 250, true ); // Post Page Main image
}

5. After seeign this was in place I then got the plugin “Regenerate Thumbnails” – Assuming this would scour the posts for content and place the thumbnail image. No go… ran the plugin – reloaded the page and the fetured images do not show up.

So my question is this… is there any way out there for my theme (that supports thumbnails) to automatically grab images from the post and set it as the featured image for that particular post? I am lost on this one and need some help.

Doing this manually would take forever and I would never be able to keep up with setting these images. I don’t think I am the only one out there with a magazine style site that uses featured images.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you all.