Sometimes (not always) I find some of my graphics have been 'speckled' and I cannot figure out why this is happening.

Here is an example of a pic before saving:

http://www.firish.com/Dump1.jpg

(actual pic is MUCH bigger, containing lots of other graphics).

Then, after I do some fills, touchups, etc. and then save the image and reload, I often get this:

http://www.firish.com/Dump3.jpg

I've tried decreasing the amount of color depth and some other stuff but I can't stop this from happening.

Anyone have a clue as to why this is happening and how I can stop it?

Thanks!

These are pixels. PSP can not allways produce a straight line so pixels are used instead. If you look you will see where some pixels count as two and some as three to give the fill  in needed to make the line. Perhaps D or Tim can give you a better explanation later.

Quoted from admin

These are pixels. PSP can not allways produce a straight line so pixels are used instead. If you look you will see where some pixels count as two and some as three to give the fill  in needed to make the line. Perhaps D or Tim can give you a better explanation later.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear in my first explanation.

First, the lines are 'clean' after my fill.  It's only when I save and then reload that I notice this speckling.

Perhaps this will make the problem clearer:

First, I cleaned up most the pixels and had this:

http://www.firish.com/Dump4.jpg

Then I did a 'fill' with the cyan background color.  No new pixels appeared; image appeared the same.

Then I saved, closed, and reopened the file and got this:

http://www.firish.com/Dump5.jpg

The speckles are JPG compression artifacts.   See this web page for a demonstration / explanation.

PNG is the best file format for graphics (i.e., not photos).  It is lossless; JPG is the best file format for small-file-size photographs, but it is lossy (each time you save, you lose image quality and gain more of those artifacts).

For graphics like yours, save the file as a PNG.  If you don't have millions of colors in it, save it as a paletted PNG and the file size will be even smaller than the artifact-ridden JPG.

As D_Spider has said, JPG is a poor format for saving graphics. But if you really need to use it, reduce the level of compression until you don't see those artefacts. Do all your saves while editing to a lossless format like PNG, BMP, TIF, or PSPIMAGE (which is the best). Only when you're finished creating and editing the image, make a JPEG copy.
It is best to do this using File > Export JPEG Optimizer. The dialogue box should open with the sample images at a zoom of 100%. Zoom in to 200% and move the image sample so that you can see an area where they are very bad. Up at the top of the dialogue box, next to the "Presets" text box, you'll see an icon in the shape of a curved arrow. Click that to reset things to the default state. (This will give chroma subsampling of "YCbCr 1x1 1x1 1x1 (None)" and compression of 20). Those settings might work, but if you see even a hint of those compression artefacts, lower the compression further. You'll probably have to go down to 5 or less to get rid of them completely.

Ah thanks, guys, very helpful.  I should have realized the Lossy issue.