You may be wondering what, if any, advantages you have by going through this lengthy process. Well, there are some really good reasons:

1. When someone sees a thumbnail, they see the whole thing at a glance, not at the original quality and resolution that you intended, but at a severly reduced quality of presentation.

2. Many browsers, intentionally or not, will prejudge the image and decide if clicking on the link and seeing the full view is worth wasting their precious internet time or not. Some thumbnails don't really give a good impression of the full image either, so browsers selectively pass the image by to something else that looks more interesting. This means less views for your image and less comments, votes and feedback.

3. By creating your thumbnail, you essentially create advertising space to get people to look at your image. You can crop closely into interesting areas leaving the browser interested in what the fullsize may look like.