I am taking over my website shortly from my webmaster.  He has used many files and converted them to jpg format, and seems to be unwiiling to give up the original files.  Is there any way to edit jpg files???You should be able to save them to your hard drive by right clicking on them and selecting Save Picture As.  Then, you can edit them with any photo/image editor.  MS Paint, which is part of all WINDOWS computers, can be used for simple photo editing.  If you have no other photo editing programs, try a popular freeware program called IRFAN View.Most of the files are not specifically pictures, bute text, such as a menu..Is there any reason not to convert those menus to actual text?  Do you really want to have to modify or create a new image file to update a menu?  I just don't want to re-invent the wheel.  Some parts of the menu have changed, so you are saying to just enter it as text?Yes, that's generally the preferred way to create "text" menus.  The only reason for creating an image just to display text is to prevent someone from easily copying text.   Using an image also makes creating links to the menu more complex since it may require a technique called image mapping.  In other words, you must mark different parts of the image for different hyperlinks.  Make sense?  Also, why make your web page file unnecessarily large by using an image where text will SUFFICE?  The word, text, takes four bytes if coded as text.  If it's displayed within an image, it will take many more bytes.  

No offense, but the fact you're ASKING these questions indicates you have a lot to learn about developing web pages.  Have you given some thought to how you're going to learn what you need to know?yes, tutorials, books , trial and error, and asking questions.  I just thought there was a shortcut for doing this with the old jpegs.  I created my own menus for the store which are QUITE elaborate, via Illustrator.  I know there is a wealth of knowledge to know for web building, so lets consider this brain aerobics....I own dreamweaver and do not find it too difficult to use. But advice is always welcome..No shortcuts for "old jpegs".  Some helpful links here on image mapping, under More Examples.  If you own a scanner, you probably also own some optical character recognition software.  You can use this to extract the text from images, provided it is not too obscured and difficult to read.  If there is a LOT of text, then this is a worthwhile way of proceeding.  You also may want to reopen dialogue with the former wemaster.  If he's relinquishing the web site, it doesn't make sense for him to be precious about original files!

A major reason not to use the text-as-images method is that it makes the website utterly useless for blind/partially-sighted web users (who use screen readers).