Help with Frommel design

Hi there, it may not be wise for a newbie like me (no prior php experience) but I 've decided to tackle a big project : build my own Frommel-like design...

My albums page is here :
http://server101.totalchoicehosting.com/~severyn/gallery/albums.php

In itself, it's quite an achievement... and I was proud and upbeat, 'till I hit the "view_album.php" page : it looks much harder.
(take a look at http://server101.totalchoicehosting.com/~severyn/gallery/aero )

I'm stuck on the highlight picture. I want to do 2 things :

1/ have the hightlight picture of the parent album be a top banner for the whole page (currently, I only have the thumbnail of the highlight picture)

2/ have the thumbnails of hightlight pictures of the sub-albums with the same format as my "albums.php" page (that is 248 px wide) and NOT regular thumbnails size.

For point 1/, I've tried the following php code :

$pathtotop = $gallery->album->getPhotoPath(1);
$photo = $gallery->album->getPhoto(1);

with an img src=
echo $pathtotop

doesn't work.

For point 2/ I don't even know where to start...

Thanks for the help.

Olivier