Image sizes, footer widget area

Hi! I’m very new to wordpress and am still in the process of figuring pretty much everything out.

1) I’m experiencing problems in regards to image sizes in my home page; wherever I change it its always in a portrait format. ive tried Portfolio view width under layput & Features (currently set at 1000) I’d like them to be smaller

2) one of the images shows up as rotated 90 even when the orientation in image gallery is corrected, please advise.

3) featured image size in posts are too big, I can’t seem to crop the image only in the post area to turn it into a landscape format. Otherwise I have to scroll endlessly to get to the text.

4) would like to eliminate the margin of the texts in posts so the text and the image aligns perfectly.

5) Last but not least, I’d like to have a long linear footer widget area instead of the 2 column like central one I have currently.

I know this is somewhat of a long post but I’d appreciate all the help! Thank you in advance.