I would also try various filters -- sharpen might be too much, but unsharp mask might do it. Also, do all your conversions before any resizing.

I suggest modifying your instruction in one respect. Conversion to GIF should always be the last step. Resizing an image which is already a GIF can give ragged results.

I would use this kind of workflow:

1)Make the image look great as a TIFF --run all the contrast, curves, and filters you need.

In fact, if you are headed for a much smaller image, you should often OVER-sharpen with Unsharp Mask filter while the image is still large.

Sizing down can soften important contrasts -- oversharpening the large image helps retain critical detail when you take the image smaller.

2) Now resize the image.

If it's a big jump, do this in several small steps and check the image quality each step of the way. If you're losing detail, back up one step on the history list and run some more Unsharp Mask or Contrast before you take the next step down.

Perhaps you just need to select the particular area of the image that is problematic and sharpen it a bit. The goal is for the image to look slightly over-sharpened right before the final downsize. Then it comes in looking great. You never want to run filters on the final size image if you don;t have to.

3) If your TIFF is a grayscale, do not go directly to GIF. Photoshop has much better algorithms for going from RGB to GIF, so go to RGB color space first, and then index to GIF. It's also a good idea to run Desaturate first, just to be sure you have only black to white shades with no color saturation at all.

4) Black and white images seldom need a lot of colors in GIF. For instance, most single color lettering will look the same at 6 or 8 colors as it does with the 16 to 36 that Photoshop uses to initially render a font. Even delicate line art almost never needs more than 32 colors, in my experience.

Make a selection of the most highly detailed areas before you convert to GIF -- and leave that selection active during the conversion (turn off the marching ants if you need to to see your image properly). When you have an active selection, Photoshop will weight the color table toward the shades in the selected areas, retaining more of the gentle detail.

Hope this helps. Run your experiments on a copy rather than the original. There's a certain knack to this that you can develop rather quickly. Soon your eye will be very educated.

If you're doing a jpg, you can create a teensy file with great quality, and almost no artifacts of compression. Try it, I think you'll like it

I will play with that tip, Lynne, although I have to admit I've really taken to PS' Save-for-the-Web function. In the past, I've found that I can make better quality graphics in PS than ImageReady, and at about the same file size (maybe I just got used to PS).

But the locking sounds interesting; I will go check it out. One can always learn something new.

Post away!

From my first trials, I assumed -- perhaps wrongly -- that it was automating some of the techniques I had already developed, but taking away some of my control. I certainly may be wrong and whenever I find the time I will give it another go.

ImageReady also makes rollovers and animations easy (and writes the scripts), along with the optimization functions.

On the other hand, I'm finding great use in some of these "new" features, and the two programs have so many features that it's easy to come across new ones -- and new uses for older ones -- all the time.

Always something to learn!

Lynne, as always, you're a peach. And a knowledgeable one, at that.