Using images and pictures on your web site is well worth the effort as they can convey an idea very quickly before the visitor reads the article and also break up the content into more bite sized pieces.

To make sure your web pages will load as quickly as possible remember to optimise your images before uploading to your web site.  But before you rush out to buy the latest Adobe Photoshop or Corel's paint Shop Pro find out if free image editor software is good enough first.

Personally, if it's just a quick case of cropping and optimising I'll use
Paint from Paint.net.  It's extremely simple to reduce image file sizes in this program and best of all it's free to download.  If I didn't already own Photoshop I'd definitely be learning how to get the best out of Paint.  You'll find loads of reviews of the product at Download.com and can also get the product there.

If you want to know a bit more regarding Paint's background, take a look at this interview from Betanews.com with one of the lead developers Rick Brewster.