You are probably using America Online, or possibly NetZero, with the "image compression" feature turned on. This saves bandwidth and therefore speeds up your web experience, at the price of image quality -- and forces the use of a proprietary image format which you usually cannot reopen in a graphics program. For instructions to turn off this feature of AOL and/or NetZero, see why do images look bad on my computer? Of course, the ability to save JPEG, PNG and GIF images does not mean you can legally use other people's copyrighted work in your own web page. Unless you have obtained the permission of the author, you may not use their graphics on your own site.
