how to make GREAT thumbs
 

This may sound as a newbie question, but I'm just looking to improve my methods.

My normal procedure for making a thumb is:

- Crop to the thumb size in Photoshop.
- Apply the standard sharpen filter.
- Save as normal high quality JPEG (not for web, since that simply sucks in Photoshop).
- Use another program to convert the JPEG to a very efficient one so it's much smaller and without losing quality.

I know there are other things I can do to it in Photoshop to make them look a lot better, but I don't know what things are the best.

I now have all good thumbs, I would like to be able to make GREAT thumbs. Anyone any suggestions?

http://www.xat.com/io/index.html
this will help you create those really good looking thumbs