Featured Slider Image vs. Other Product Images

I could really use some help with this. I’m on the latest, greatest WP version and using Elegant Themes ‘Boutique’ as my storefront. They use the default WP resizing function from media.php. The regular function was fine for 4 of the products I’m posting but is cutting off the 5th in a way that won’t work. When I asked them to help me troubleshoot they sent me to a page explaining how to change the x,y points for where WP crops an image. This isn’t the solution for me since it’s just going to make the other 4 images a problem.

I’m open to suggestions – there are probably things I haven’t considered. But, I’d really love to know how to do any one of these things:

Option 1: tell WP, now that it’s created a thumbnail for the ‘featured slider’ to stop re-creating them and keep using the ones that are there. (with this hack, I’ve cropped exactly what I want the image to look like, made it the same size and given it the same name and replaced the file so WP pulls only the ‘good’ version. But it seems to refresh every once in a while and the ‘bad’ version reappears.

Option 2: Maybe someone knows a way to have one image function as a ‘featured’ image for the sake of the slider but a different image as the thumbnail on the main product pages?

I’m really stumped but this one image really can’t be hacked off like it is.
– in this version of the site (http://www.bluedotrobot.com/partners/) the butterfly in the slider is cut off and is the issue, but the thumb is great as-is and the product page is great as-is. (changing the featured slider image reverses the problem and makes the thumb and product page look off but the slider looks good)
– in this version of the site, the slider now looks good but i hate the thumb and the product page. http://www.bluedotrobot.com/retail/

Please, please please can someone help?

M