Right, then I usually use CSS if I'm going to be doing that. What you'll see on my home page though is quite a few images that I rotate around in a small couple tables (don't you dare point your finger at me like that!) LOL just cuz it's easier for me and it's just lightbox stuff, and the basics of layout are just not easy for me to do so I chose tables. I'm sure eventually I'll learn how layout is done better and work more layers into it instead of tables, but for now it works for me lol.

Because of this I choose to do HTML with them, and the divider at the top (which is changing today) which is changed a lot, things like that. If it's things that will be the same on all pages, those I setup CSS for though.

I find for consistency reasons that all of my pages contain the same core images. And to me (I am odd in this regard), images are part of the layout because layout is part of the visual appeal to sites. Many times images give me the ideas behind what I will design next. I see the image and have an "existential moment". I have gone off track. Thanks for the conversation though.

What you might consider is whether the image is just decorative, or does it need to be visible even if styling is turned off or isn't available.

This is good to consider.

As to your original question, I can't see why one way or another would make any difference as regards loading time. You could argue that CSS is slightly quicker because marginally it would have (in most cases) slightly less content if your using external CSS.

It still has to load and render.

Normally i use CSS to make the website structure and html to place my website content. CSS is more complex , detailed and have more characteristics. I use html to "call" the css i create. Html is always present with or without css. In my opinion css makes the page code more organized.