Help with Editing pictures looking blokey - 56k warning

[RC21]

Hi all, and thanks for looking in.

Here is my original pic:

http://www.asls85.dsl.pipex.com/t1.jpg

Here is my touched up pic:

http://www.asls85.dsl.pipex.com/t2.jpg

The touched up one is very good but some of the colours in the sky haven't seemed to have blended very, see below: it looks a bit blocky in the circled area

http://www.asls85.dsl.pipex.com/t3.jpg

Any idea's how to get rid of this?

I'm using Jasc paint shop pro but also have access to Photoshop.
Cheers, RC

[Roger The Shrubber]

The stripes in the colors is known as "banding" and it occurs when you use a lower amount of colors or use too much compression on the file. The blockyness is due to too much compression of the file.

Make sure you are saving the file with 16 million colors and the compression is not set too low if you saving as a JPEG format

[Van Nugent]

Also make sure you convert the file to a lossless format such as BMP before editing.

[RC21]

Thanks guys, i'll give it a go and let you know how i comes out.
Thanks again, RC

[scarecrowdr]

Better Still, Save your Image----Save As "Tiff"..better than a BMP..Never use your original JPG...Keep it safe...

[Van Nugent]

You can use any lossless format such as TIFF, PNG, BMP, ...

TIFF and PNG both supports alpha channel that requires software supporting alpha channel such as PhotoShop for easy editing. TIFF would provide the largest size if compared with files saved in BMP or PNG.