mod_rewrite

Ok, i am a little new to apache, so go easy on me.

I have an database based website that uses id's to call each page e.g http://www.somesite.co.uk/index.php?id=1

now this i all very nice, but i find that url a little long for me, so i would like to be able to make it into something like http://www.somesite.co.uk/1

now i know this would have implications like if i wanted to sent to a folder past the root, like http://www.somesite.co.uk/images/1.jpg so it would have to have exceptions setup to.

now i have been told that this can be done with a mod_rewrite, but i have spend days pouring over documentation, google hits etc and i have yet to manage to do this. is there anyone out there who has a any clue's?

Thanks for any help