What exactly is best?? A jpeg with a transparent background?? Or a gif?? Can someone suggest as to how they go about getting "low bandwith" images that look sharpest for the web?? If I wanted to create a website that contained a large picture what would be best, small sections puzzled together or one big huge image?? One problem I have had also is creating an image for the web that actually "matches" the background in both browsers, (explorer and netscape), as I find that it will look great in one, but then the other will show a variance in colour?? Once you save it as a jpeg or gif, this sometimes seems to alter the colour level as well??

3D- I'm not aware of transparency fot JPGs, but the usally rule of thumb is use JPG for all color images unless you need the special features of GIF, like animation and transparency, and save as medium or less quality (but I can't bring myself to use low, I don't do low quality images!) Make sure you set the background color for the page, don't let the browser use its default- you should even set a background color if you use wallpaper, so your text is readable while the wallpaper loads. Also remember, a GIF is only 256 colors (max), so if you use one of the "system" or "websafe" palettes it might not have the right colors in it.

This really depends on the type of image you want to display. If it is one large image, I would suggest a medium quality jpg, that will preserve the color depth, and still keep some image quality. However, if you want transparency, then there are a few things you can do. First disable anti-aliasing on the selection tool you are using. Then set the background color to an alpha channel color. The best/most commonly used color for a transparency is an RGB value of 255,0,255. This is an ugly bright pink color. Set this as the background color. Then make a selection of the area that you want to be transparent, and hit delete. Using this method will prevent your image outline from having a "fuzzy" edge when you export it to a .gif file. One thing to remember is that once you get your un-antialiased edge, if you copy the image and paste it in another layer or image, Photoshop AUTOMATICALLY will antialias it again, so you will get a fuzzy pixel pink edge on your image. Then when you are exporting the image, be sure and specify the same RBG color value for the transparent color. co(V)(V)union

It has always been my preference to use jpegs whenever possible. despite their lack of transparency you can get pretty good file sizes without any loss in your color pallete. Pages with a background color and no background image are easier to read, quicker to load, and easier to match images to without using transparent gifs. I am just generally against gifs for anything but small and simple animations. Also I have been known to beat up my coworkers for pronouncing GIF as JIF. (it's Graphics Interchange Format and Graphics does not have a J sound) Sorry for the rant...