How do I optimize an image?

My websites header image seems to load really slow, I was reading about optimizing, or compressing images.. Can anyone offer some insight into how I do that or point me to a good resource?
Thanks

 

The entire site loads too slow not just your header

 

K, I thought it was just the header causing it.. Any ideas? Is it most likely the images causing this?

 

Save the header as a .jpg and try that. 500kb+ is way too large.

 

I must have messed up when I saved it, thanks for your help!

 

Are you using Photoshop? if yes, click on file>save image for web... Or you can slice your image so that it loads faster.

 

Anyone know of a few good tricks that can generally get a site to load up ultra-quick?

 

It depends on how you save your image. Always use the save for web utility and adjust the level it shows you the image size and you can see the quality.

 

The size of you image may cause problem. Reduce the size of your image using Photoshop.
Zubair.

 

It seems allright to me right now. Aside from the header image being huge, your hosting server could be slow. Try getting an account through another web host, changing the nameservers and see if that works. If not, get your 30 day money back guarantee.

 

Try resizing your image

 

I think its not the problem with your header image alone ..