Hello,
I'm looking for either
a) some cheap/free software with variable compression for jpegs, ie some areas with more compression than others
or
b) a standard graphics program that includes this feature. (Does anyone know if the latest versions of PSP or Ulead Photoimpact do? That's the limit of what I can afford!)

Thanks for your help!

Try Web Image Guru at www.vimas.com. I love it.

Thanks! I'll have a look...

I always use Macromedia Fireworks when working with compression. As you can slice differenet parts of the image and optimize them separately.

Yeah - Fireworks is the one.