How should I do this?

I have a layout that's using high quality JPG files. Since they are a bit bigger what method should I use to make the page load quicker?

Thanks!

It's been a while since I've done any advanced web layouts/design, but one trick that was used back in the day was to use proper width and height tags in the images. That way the browser would set aside the space for the image ahead of time and could render the rest of the page before the images finish loading.

serve using a separate instance of lighttpd or tux or apache (mpm=worker/event) since they are known to serve static content faster.

If you are using previous/next image functionality you may want to pre-load images. While a user is looking at the first image others are being preloaded for quicker navigation.