Need Pointers on how to Optimize for Web like a PRO

[Brsynk]

Hey all
I am new to this forum but I look forward to being an active poster.

I am needing any tricks, tricks, pointers, tutorials, books or site referrals on how to best
optimize photos for the web.

I have a photo website that scales the image proportionally with the browser window within a fluid layout.
so the file needs to be rather large in size (1700px wide)
because of this I really need to get the file size as low as possible for decent loading times.

up to now I have been using the save for web option in Photoshop CS4 and while the results are pretty
good I do see better examples online and I would desperately like to know how to get my photos to look
as good as some that I see.

are there programs better at doing this the PS? (I am on a mac)
is Fireworks any good at such things?

would this be something that a action may be useful for?
(should I condense using a stepped approach like when I am enlarging)

is there a more efficient way to optimize the color palate?

in some cases I see that 80 % of the photo can take a large reduction in size without affecting the quality much
but the other 20% looks awful...

Is there a way to selectively optimize (sorta like masking) or combining 2 optimized versions in to a median?

really any tips would be greatly appreciated.

thanks.

[GuitarCrazyo]

This is such a big question that itd be really hard for one person to write you a post that answered every question, I think.

A great way is to look into some of the other discussions here.

[gusak22]

fireworks is used for getting photos and images ready for web use among other things. i have never heard about the quality median thing past maybe bringing the quality up. remember to look at the different file types as well as quality though. sometimes a gif might look just as good as a jpg but have a much smaller file size.

[mitzs]

Brsynk When you save for the web are you saving them as a Gif? Jpeg? Which format.

I upload my images to flickr all the time. I really don't see that big of a change. I just go to image/image size and change my size Pixel size or the resolution 72. Sometimes I do both if I know I am going to post an image to a forum to meet the requirements for that site. Try it that way and see what you think.

[TofSninomaita]

I agree with james_littler, browsershots for something like that would be a good choice, though you could go one step further and get some virtual machine software running with a copy of linux and try it in realtime.

[corporate111]

Hey all
I am new to this forum but I look forward to being an active poster.

I am needing any tricks, tricks, pointers, tutorials, books or site referrals on how to best
optimize photos for the web.

I have a photo website that scales the image proportionally with the browser window within a fluid layout.
so the file needs to be rather large in size (1700px wide)
because of this I really need to get the file size as low as possible for decent loading times.

[spraclimul]

I'm a designer and I accept with information: fireworks is used for getting photos and images ready for web use among other things.

[jolpo]

i still prefer imageready over fireworks because it is really user friendly and in my opinion can't be compared with fireworks.