What format do you save your profile pics in? I bought the Digital Camera upgrade so I can upload the 250kb size avatar, but I can't get ANY of my images below 260 unless I save as a .gif which cuts it to tiny sizes. But, of course, the colours are drained like hell >_<

So, any tips folks? I'm all ears.

Have you tried saving it as a jpeg?, it works for me with no trouble

Yeah, and sometimes it's fine - but other times it's over by, like, 10kb or something and I can only get it lower by removing things... which ruins the pic

Most apps should allow you in the "save as" dialog a quality/compression slider for the jpeg format. The higher the compression, the more details you lose, the smaller the image size. However if you can find an app which allows you fine tweaks (not only 1 through 10, but 1 through 100), you could gradually affect the compression rate and get a decent final pic.

Sorry 'bout not giving any app names, I don't really know the windows ones. (Except for Paint.NET which is really awesome and fast (once you install the .NET framework) - but check up on their page, they have full instructions there.)

The GIMP saves JPG at  85% quality by default, and you can't really tell the difference.

Edit, there is a windows version: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gimp-win/gimp-2.6.5-i686-setup.exe

Just open up your image in it, save it and name the file something.jpg.

It will open a dialog with a slider between 1 and 100 quality.

You can even click the checkbox for a preview of what the image will look like (this also makes it show you the filesize that it would be if you pressed save at that quality level).

If you're using Photoshop, hit ctrl+alt+shift+s and in the drop down menu click on JPEG.

There should be a slider to raise/lower quality, along with checkbox options such as "Optimized", etc., which should make it easier for you get the desired file size.

~Jazz