You can have all the nice looking graphics you want but if the image takes to long to download on someone's browser, they may not wish to wait, and either go back to another page, or just get fed up all together and leave your entire site. Generally the rule I go by is that a page will take no longer then 20-25 seconds maximum to load over a 56k modem connection. If you have a lot to say, or a lot of images to show about a certain topic, spread them over several pages, instead of just one.