Yes this can be done..you would need to write some of your own XSLT or Razor to achieve it...

The follwing code could be adapted to limit the copy..

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE xsl:stylesheet [
    <!ENTITY nbsp "&#x00A0;">
]>
<xsl:stylesheet
  version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
  xmlns:msxml="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
  xmlns:umbraco.library="urn:umbraco.library"
  exclude-result-prefixes="msxml umbraco.library">

    <xsl:output method="xml" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

    <xsl:param name="currentPage"/>
<xsl:param name="MaxNoChars" select="190" />
<xsl:template match="/">

  <xsl:for-each select="$currentPage//ancestor-or-self::doTextpage[@isDoc and showOnHomepage = '1']">     
  <div class="redPanel">
    <h2><xsl:value-of select="@nodeName" /></h2>
    <p><xsl:value-of select="umbraco.library:TruncateString(umbraco.library:StripHtml(umbraco.library:Replace(current()/bodyText, '&amp;nbsp;', '')), $MaxNoChars, '...')" /></p>
    <p><a href="{umbraco.library:NiceUrl(@id)}"> <img src="/img/btnMore.png" alt="read more" tooltip="Read more" align="right" /> </a></p>
    </div>
    </xsl:for-each>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

As for any images i would use ImageGen to change the size, i think might even be used already by ublogsy...hope this helps.

S