Opions, and advice needed.

[tomfmason]

I have written a comprehensive chat app and am now trying to design a GUI for a hidden div on my EBay auctions. I designed the following in Fireworks.

http://www.thomashostings.net/images/chatTest.png

for some reason I am unable to display the image on this page. I may not know the proper bbcode. I used . I guess that the [nobbc] tags do not work here as well..


Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

If you follow that link you will see that the image is very large. I really have limited experience in graphics. I usually sub out all of the graphics work. Also, when I try to export the back ground to a gif I get a mess. Here is an example.. http://www.thomashostings.net/images/test3.gif. As you can see the shading, rather the blurred portions, are all messed up.

Here is a list of the graphics software that I have.

Corel Graphics Suite 12
Fireworks MX 2004
Adobe Photoshop 7.0 //very old I know

Which software would be the best to optimize the image and which format should I go for.. i.e.. JPG, PNG, GIF or ??

Thanks,
Tom

[jswoods]

Photoshop / JPG

as you can see, photoshop will create better quality:

[Neoboffin]

Any will work. If you know how to use Fireworks, you can do exactly the same as what jswoods created. It's not what program can do what, it's how you use them.

For gradients and lots of colours, use JPG format.

This is what I whipped up in Fireworks..

[mastermemei]

You just have to maximize the functionality of the program that you are using to get the best result:)