SWulfe-
Not to flog a dead horse, but you're just plain wrong here. The limitation of colors used by Gif is 256 regardless of what editor you use to save it. The reasons to use Gif would include (but not exclusive to):
1. When you have large areas of solid color, and are using less than 256 colors without much blending.
2. When you want to have a transparent background.
When you meet criterion #1 Gifs are indeed smaller. If however (as in this case) you are running a larger palette and and have tons of blending, you will not only have a lower-quality output, but it will also be larger. The two samples I provided for you show what I am talking about. The Gif is 50% larger than the Jpg for the same dimensions.
Sky is right, you can always try both ways and take the example that best suits your needs. You should be aware of when to use the appropriate format in a particular case. In the original picture I could get that down to approximately 125K with acceptable quality, but even that is too large. Web graphics should be limited to probably no more than 40K for a really big graphic in these applications. Smaller is better.
