Pixelated images

I asked for a site review here: http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=86307 a while ago, and I was informed that all my images are very pixelated.

I would love to fix this issue, but I am currently at a loss on how to go about doing so. I am using a lot of gifs because I need the transparency feature. I have also tried using pngs, however, that will not help me with my IE visitors.

I am using Photoshop 7, but I am still a beginner using it and I am not sure if there is a way save my images so that they are not pixelated.

Can anyone help me out with "un-pixelated" my images?

By pixelated do you mean the edge pixels are light colored and your background is dark colored so they stand out like a sort of spotted halo?

That is caused by anti-aliasing in the gif. You want anti-aliasing; otherwise the edges of the graphic will look jagged. But you need to re-do the graphics using layers, with the background layer being the same color as your webpage's background color. Doing this will then cause the edge of the image to be anti-aliased into a color that doesn't clash with the background of your site.

The disadvantage of doing this of course is you can't easily change the look of your site without re-doing all the graphics-- a royal pain. This is why I stay away from transparent gifs.

What if I am using an image for a background? That is what I use here (http://xfiles.doriennesmith.com/guide.php), but the images are all jagged. Is there any workaround for this?

PNGs provide alpha transparency, that's as good as it will get.