Any way to edit/crop my featured image upon uploading?

This can be achieved by either creating an image size using <?php add_image_size( 'my-image-size', 1000, 400, true ); ?> or you can implement the Aqua Resizer to your theme/plugin. Aqua Resizer works almost in the same fashion as the good old TimThumb, but instead saves the image as a correct image size in WordPress using WordPress’ intermediate sizes methods.