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> First, you don't want to use .gif files in any commercial or for-sale
> product. To be legal, you'd have to pay a royalty and it's more trouble
> than its worth. Use .jpg (JPEG) files.
>
Linda and all,
I believe this assertion is incorrect. In order to sell software that
_produces_ .gif files as output, you need to pay a royalty. (And, for
that matter, if you "borrow" a background from someone else's website,
as you suggested elsewhere in your post, you may also be liabel for a
royalty.) But you do not have to pay a royalty for _using_ a .gif that
you produce or that you obtain legally.
.jpg and .gif are not interchangeable. The technical differences are
significant in terms of lossiness and in terms of the type of image each
is better suited for. For graphics that consist of flat tint areas and
type or of simple geometric patterns, .gif works better. For images with
shading and blending of colors (such as photographs of people or
scenery, for example), .jpg usually works better. But do the conversion
to .jpg as the last step in any image processing, and always keep the
original image on file in a lossless format rather than reprocessing a
.jpg.
