Trouble expanding my navigation bar?

[audiobahn1000]

I just took over the website pictured below and one of my first tasks is to expand the navigation bar. Well I a going for a bit more professional look so I am going to use pictures instead of text. I want to keep the format similar to that pictured. However I am having trouble figuring out to create text in an image format. I have tried Photoshop but I cannot get the images to look remotely anything close to those on the site at the moment (not to mention I cannot get the images smaller than 4,000 bytes).

So how can I create graphical representations of text similar to that currently on my website with a maximum file size of 1000 bytes?

As you see the navigation bars are pictures:

 

[patrickv]

So how can I create graphical representations of text similar to that currently on my website with a maximum file size of 1000 bytes?

when you say photoshop what file types did you save as ? did you save for web ?
why not do those small graphics individually, like "home", "Outdoor Climbing", then at the nav bar create a table and place them in it