Banner help?

[The Spanish Inquisition]

Ok so I've made a new banner, and height/width wise it's banner size, but the file is like 85 KB, which is obviously too big.

My problem is that I can't figure out 1. Why the file is so large or 2. How to reduce file size without losing quality overall. I can convert the thing to JPEG, but then it just looks awful.

Basically I have no idea what I'm doing and I just wasted like an hour on this thing that I can't use.

 

[Mrs Gil-Galad Took]

The resolution can be a problem. Check if the resolution is 72 px. What program do you use? Oh and another advice is simply to use a host like photobucket or tinypic and copy the img link over there and past it in here. Too often when you direct upload an avy or sig from your pc even when the size itself fits the allowed size it still gives you the the file is too large error. That's why I always use an external link instead of direct uploading

 

[The Spanish Inquisition]

The resolution can be a problem. Check if the resolution is 72 px. What program do you use? Oh and another advice is simply to use a host like photobucket or tinypic and copy the img link over there and past it in here. Too often when you direct upload an avy or sig from your pc even when the size itself fits the allowed size it still gives you the the file is too large error. That's why I always use an external link instead of direct uploading

I use Gimp to make them. I'll give the direct link thing a try, though.

Edit: the file is still too large (It's 31 kg) and I can't for the life of me find a way to make it any smaller. the web link gives me a 'too big' error and the direct link shrinks it so much that it's unreadable.

FURTHER EDIT: aha! figured it out. Thanks!