trying to mod something on wordpress plugin nextgen

i dont know how many peopel here use wordpress but i am using it at the moment and using a plugin for it called NextGen, this is my problem

I use the import image folder feature through NextGen plugin, currently when i import from,

.com/members/picutres/jan10set/ (several full pictures in this dir), the thumbnails are placed in /jan10set/

.com/members/ and everything in it, is password protected through cpanel.

I want the thumb nails to be public, there for, when i import

.com/members/picutres/jan10set/

i wish the thumbs folder to be placed in

.com/thumbs/jan10set because thumbs is a public folder, my viewers can see the thumbs, but when they click it, they will have to log in..  i have played with core.php and nggfunctions, not knowing what i am doing, and i got the thumbs folder to move up in directories, but the end result was failure in creating thumbs... but it did automatically create, jan10setthumbs  which is good that it gave it its uniqu name relavent to the folder which the large images are in.

i would greatly appreciate some help as to what exactly i need to edit to do this