If you're going to do all of that work, then I would recommend saving those files as PNGs or TIFFs. JPGs are "lossy," meaning that every time you save one the program does some averaging between the neighboring pixels and the display loses some of it's clarity or resolution. PNG, GIF, and TIFF are all stable. GIF doesn't use very many colors, so is only a good choice in images that don't require much color variation.

I have a good book that explains the differences between these, it's at home, so I'll post it later. Since that book came out PNGs have become very popular in the Macromedia Suite (the Dreamweaver and Flash folks). So opening a PNG file might default to one of those programs, though all browsers should open them. They compress much better than other image files.

There is a program in use here at UTA for when they "stitch together" segmented scans of large historic maps. I'll ask what the program is called. I know about it (I've seen the computer humming away at work back in Special Collections) but I've never used it.

SRS