decoupling images and meta images

Has any thought been given to decoupling the actual images inserted in Gallery from the meta image data used to create thumbs and sizes? As is now, one can’t really point third party slide show software at the pictures directory because all *.jpg are included including the meta images. Also, it would be great if gallery just kept a reference to files inserted to gallery; then one could impose any directory structure on images outside the gallery directory, insert them into gallery while preserving the original directory structure and location of files while not costing the extra space of having two copies of the image on the HDD. Just thoughts.

-- Dejas