storage of all images in single directory makes module unusable?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong - but the fact that the image module stores all images, and all resized copies, in the same directory makes the image module completely unusable. Say for instance that a person has galleries of thousands of images (and I do) using the image module with the gallery stores all the images in a single directory. Having thousands, or 10's of thousands of files in a single directory not only severely impacts performance of a server, but makes working with that directory difficult. With 10's of thousands of files in a single directory working with gzip for back up or even performing a simple list command on that directory is anywhere from impossible depending on a persons allowances on a server to very difficult. I have always used a separate gallery installation along side my Drupal site - and I would love to be able to incorporate my image galleries in to Drupal, but with this fatal flaw I just don't see any way to do it. I was excited to see the addition of the mass import function, which works great - but having all the images in the same directory with no way to import in to subdirectories just makes no sense to me.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to utilize subdirectories in the file structure and I am just not aware of it? Do the module developers not realize the enormous problem of keeping all the images in a single directory? --I'd be happy for someone to enlighten me if I am missing something obvious here...and I hope I am. The image module has come a long, long way recently and I think the Drupal community is finally ready to have a full fledged gallery solution inside Drupal - but only if this problem is solved.