Nice tattoo bikini! We need those in real life, but no one's getting near my hoohoo with a motorized needle (or any needle for that matter). She needs something on her arm(s) to offset the high boots and skimpy suit. Maybe even a band around her neck. I never use compression with jpegs, regardless of how big the file is; it takes too much away for there to be a real benefit. Most galleries will have a thumbnail pointing to a larger file, so it's perfectly okay to have a large file (unless your host has a small filesize limit, in which case you'd be limited to maybe three pics at best). If you have PSP, try decreasing to 256 using Optimized Octree. This always gives me better color than anything else (although I try to stay within 16 million colors no matter what). I don't think any particular color anywhere will make a difference, since a blank image the same depth and dimensions will be the same size as the full scene. You can also zoom in on pixelated areas and smooth them with the smooth/smudge brush. Finally, you can just paint in some smoke from a smoldering fire to hide the pixelation. Newc