[support] Images only show up for administrator

[Seth]

Problem:

I use the image module (and its submodules like image import and image
gallery) along with flash_gallery on my site.  Since I upgraded to
drupal 5.7 (from 5.something), only the administrator can see any
images.  Everyone else gets a frame where the image would be, but with
an X instead of the image.  It's the same for the image node itself,
or the images when you enter through the image gallery.  When I look
in the logs all I see is this:

Type	access denied
Date	Wednesday, April 9, 2008 - 15:48
User	Anonymous
Location	http://removed/home/system/files/images/filename.thumbnail.jpg
Referrer	http://removed/home/image
Message	     system/files/images/filename.thumbnail.jpg
Severity	warning

I thought it was maybe a linux permissions thing, and I tried a whole
bunch of different options between changing ownership and permissions,
pretty much making ignorant changes to my files directory and
everything in it, but no matter what I did, I did the anonymous user
could not see the images.

Today I realized that if I go to: admin/settings/file-system and
change from private (the way I always have had it), to public... the
anonymous users can actually see the images again both in the
individual image node and the image/flash galleries.  The only problem
with this, is that new stuff I add when the filesystem is set to
public mode, doesn't show up anywhere for anonymous users.  Not just
empty frames like before, I mean it doesn't even display on the page.
  At least when the filesystem is set to private, I can see the
picture is there, i just cant see the picture itself. Does that make
sense?

This seems to point even more towards an issue with the drupal access
control rather than the file system permissions.   (BTW, drupal does
see the files directory as writable)

The only other peace of relevant information is that a week or two
before I upgraded to 5.7, I did install the image_gallery_access
module, however the site was working fine until I upgraded (i think)

Any help would be much appreciated.  The worst part in all of this is
that I messed up my backups so I can't just revert back.  I did try
reverting back to the old drupal code, but this issue followed me.
I am once again on drupal 5.7, with the latest database schema, and
EVERYTHING except the images seems to be working fine.

-Seth