thumbnail width and height not working properly

[cinco5s]

I'm setting up a store for stand-up paddle boards, so the thumbnail needs to be tall like 90px by 250px, but then i have other products like hats, and i want those to be 90px by 90px.
i thought that setting the image thumbnail to width=90, height=250, would make thumbnails that are no wider that 90px and no taller that 250px, but what it does instead is make all my thumbnails 250px tall regardless of the width. so i end up with really big thumbnails for the hats that the template then resizes to 90px wide, making my page unnecessary heavy.
why have a width parameter if its just going to ignore it? am i missing something?
Thanks for the help

[PRO]

You are not going to get what you are looking for with the auto create thumbnail (AND dynamic thumbnails turned on)

BUT,  here is a tool that can help you.
http://www.irfanview.com/

^^  If you use irfanview thumbnails, you can BATCH resize them based on the width or height.
So in other words, you can download your whole /resized/ folder, and work on them. THEN, reupload.

It takes a little while to get them the way you want so DO NOT batch re-size etc. YOUR LIVE IMAGES
PRACTICE locally.

I have attached a picture of my configuration of what worked on my last batch. These settings d not distort the images. It took a while to get it configured so it did not distort them. Thats why I am showing you.




[attachment cleanup by admin]

[Gruz]

I'd also advice Mihov's Image Resizer