Hi Jim,
Good question, it is best practice to slice the image up to minimise the overall page size.
There are various techniques you can use, for instance:
The top menu section, I would use a div tag, specify a blue background color and a thick black bottom border (no images required)
(this is the first thing I attempt - replicate the image by just using CSS and no images)
The background image that has diagonal lines - you could take a small sample image of this and use CSS to repeat it horizontally and vertically
(this is the second technique, where you can replicate the image horizontally or vertically)
if you apply those two techniques in adapting an image to a skin you should be able to create a very efficient skin.
you may want to check:
and
How to create a skin for DotNetNuke(this is a demonstration using tables, but it does demonstrate the techniques for small background images)
- I think a demonstration of converting an image to a DotNetNuke skin would be a good tutorial and I will add it to the list ...
Thanks,