I made the GIF's myself. I use Hot Dog Pro, and I used the "Image Lab" super toolz to convert existing Jpeg's to Gifs, but it leaves a halo of grey pixels around the object that make the finished product look amateurish.

Can anyone tell me what is wrong, or give some tips in the best way to convert an existing Jpeg to a Gif?

If I understand you correctly, you are converting JPG's to GIF, then simply making the background transparent? This usually won't work without some intermediate work on the graphic itself. JPG and GIF are both bitmap images, that is, they are made up of pixels of color. The naked eye may not notice it (which is the point and why it works), but the edge of the object isn't a perfect line. Its a jagged line with subtle shade variations from pixel to pixel that blend it into the background. These shades will be more pronounced when you convert a jpg's thousand or millions of colors to a 256 color gif--the computer won't map them all to the same color.

I don't know what Image Lab is. It its not a full graphics editing program, you will need photoshop, paintshop pro, fireworks, or some other graphics program that will let you edit the image. You can usually take care of halos by selecting the background with a tool, expanding it a few pixels to engulf the stray edge pixels, and then filling it with the color you want to use for the transparent color. You may even need to do some pixel by pixel doctoring.

Do the images HAVE to be transparent?

[This message has been edited by xelA (edited 04-25-2001).]