TUTORIALS

Sending Digital Photos by E-mail

This informative letter was sent by missionary Randy Smyth
(New Tribes Mission, PNG, Jan. 2006)

We love to see pictures from friends and family. One of the problems with that is file sizes. Our entire mailbox size through NTM is five (5) megabytes. When even one picture taken with a seven megapixel camera (or sometimes from a two megapixel camera) is sent to us in a newsletter, it shuts down our email service. No other messages can be sent because our mail box is full. In addition to that, the file size is so large that it cannot be forwarded on to our mail box in Papua New Guinea. So, it sits there blocking our email until we have a good enough internet connection to get online and delete it. If your message has been returned “Undeliverable” that could be the cause. (We are advised by our computer staff to keep email file sizes under 50K (or 0.05 megabytes).)

The solution is to change the size of the picture. Windows XP has built in features to deal with this and the newer versions of Microsoft Office products such as Microsoft Word have the capability of shrinking pictures sizes when you send your document as an email. (File, Send To, Mail Recipient) (not “As Attachment”)

If you simply want to send a picture with a quick note, Windows XP makes sending pictures by email simple: “Open My Pictures (or whatever folder contains the pictures you want to email) and select the pictures. Right-click the picture(s), and from the shortcut menu, choose Send To and Mail Recipient. In the Send Pictures Via E-mail dialog box, click Show More Options and select the size to which you want Windows to reduce your pictures. Small is usually the best choice for emailing. Click OK. Windows will reduce the photos and present an email form with the photos attached.” (From http://www.smartcomputing.com)

You could simply send your picture file as an attachment by clicking the Attach button in your email software, but the picture will remain in its original (large) size, so you would need to edit it yourself before sending it by email as an attachment. Newsletters: Unless your software automatically reduces file sizes, you will need to use photo editing software to resize your pictures before importing them into your newsletter.

Most new computers now come with photo editing software, as do most digital cameras. Photo editing software is also available from some of the camera manufacturers or as bonus items in photo printing paper packages. The file types JPEG (or JPG) or PNG are good for photos. Other types such as BMP, TIFF, PCX, TGA, MIX, GIF are large in size or poor in quality or may be unreadable by your recipients unless they have similar software. (If you can’t tell what type they are, in Windows Explorer you can see the file name extensions by clicking Tools, Options, View and under “Advanced settings” uncheck the box that says “Hide extensions for known file types”, then click OK.)

You can see what size your picture is in Windows Explorer. Open the folder where your picture is stored, click View, Details. If the file size is not displayed, Right Click ?on “Name” at the top of the column to chose size, date modified, type, dimensions. Size tells you the file’s size in KB. Dimensions tells you the size in pixels. The dimensions 800x600 pixels is large enough for a fair quality picture and should be about 100KB in size. Most people can receive that without too much difficulty but smaller is better. (Alternatively, in Windows XP, place the mouse pointer over the file name. An information box should appear in a second. If not, right click on the file name and choose Properties to view the file size.)

This from PC Today: http://www.pctoday.com:
Resizing Tips

As high-resolution digital cameras become more affordable, more and more users are clogging up the inboxes of their friends and family by sending full-size images via email. You can avoid such a photo-sharing faux pas by learning to resize your images.

Resizing simply means reducing the proportions and size of your file. If you have 5-megapixel camera, the dimensions of the file are approximately 2,592 x 1,944 pixels, and it’s very possible that your image files are larger than 2MB each. It takes a lot of extra work from your computer to handle these files, and they bog down email applications, too. With a resizing program, you can reduce the size of the image to 640 x 480, or even smaller, and reduce the file to 50KB or less.

If you’re using Windows XP, you can download the Image Resizer PowerToy from Microsoft (www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx). This is a free utility that lets you right-click images and select more suitable proportions, either one image at a time or many images simultaneously. If you’re using a different OS or you want a utility with more options, you can install a full-fledged image-editing program, such as Adobe Photoshop Elements (www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin), or you can choose from a number of free programs found on sites such as Freeware Home (www.freewarehome.com).