If you've ever bothered to notice -- compressed .JPEG images make models look older! That's because of compression artifacts -- (those little squigly lines around the models face, lips, etc...) -- these artifacts make chicks look a lot older and more nasty than they really are... Women have soft skin and often .JPEG will give the opposite impression. What really sux is when a surfer is looking at a hot teen gallery and the model looks like she's 30 because of JPEG artifacts... It's just too bad that .JPEG is the standard -- I would think that there are better compression algorithms that would be suited to our business of presenting soft looking images... I know -- it's not a big deal because bandwidth is cheap as hell now -- but I would tend to think that highly compressed images sell memberships better -- if it weren't for artifacts that looked like age-lines then I think everyone would be more happy...
One way to help -- model images compress better if photographers don't apply sharpening filters... A lot of digital cameras today have sharpening algorithms hard-wired into the image processing chip -- so I'd say keep that in mind when you buy a digital camera or all your images will have that shitty "artifact look" after web compression. Sharpened images create a line around the model -- and this is bad for JPEG since it produces artifacts mostly on linear elements (same reason why you use .GIF for fonts instead of .JPEG). Also if your pics aren't grainy before compression they will look better -- boosting saturation or contrast incorrectly in Photoshop will add unsightly grain...
