A POSSIBLE IMAGES ISSUE SOLUTION
I think the problem you are having of RSD getting bogged down may be from the cumulative number of images, not that any particular image(s) is too large. Try this:

Do not add the images to resources. Instead, prep them all and ftp them to a folder on your hosting server.

For each picture, put the image element on the page and add your settings. In the Picture drop-down where you normally select the image from the resources, choose "Online Image." It will open up a small text box below. Put the entire URL for the image in that box. For example, if you FTP'd your images into the "gallery" folder, then it may be http://yourdomain.com/gallery/imagefilename.jpg

Try that and see if it helps.

Hi Brian,

From the beginning stages of development, I did exactly what you described and used the full url for images for the reason the website was placed on a temp test folder. Now that the website www.jewelry-tutorials.com is live , I was considering changing all the image links to ......... /gallery/imagefilename.jpg.

Just curious, why do you recommend to keep the full url image link?

Kind regards,
Anne

Hi Brian...
Like Anne, I also have it set-up as you suggested. All my images are in a folder on my server and I use the entire URL.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread...I haven't added anything to my resource folder.
Thanks.