The real joy in taking photos is in sharing. Whether it's a cute snap of your daughter playing with her first set of Lego blocks or a dazzling shot of Saturn, your photos cry out to be handed around.

With your computer, you can give your prize snaps a far wider audience than just your geographically handy circle of friends, family and colleagues. Publish them on your Web site. Create an online album using one of the free or pay services available. Or use the simplest method of all: E-mail.

Attachment basics

When you send photos in e-mail, the photos go along for the ride as attachments, just like any other file you add to an e-mail.

To attach a photo in Outlook:

  1. Click New to open a Message window.
  2. Fill in the To and Subject boxes as usual and type any message you wish to accompany the photos.
  3. Click Insert File (the paperclip icon), locate your file through the Insert File box, click the file's name and then click the Insert button. If you wish to add multiple files from within the same folder, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking multiple files, then click the Insert button.
  4. Repeat Step 3 for any other files you wish to attach.
  5. Click Send.

In Outlook Express:

  1. Click Create Mail to open a New Message window.
  2. Fill in the To and Subject lines and type in your message.
  3. Click the Attach button, locate the file in the Insert Attachment box and click Attach. Use Ctrl-click to select multiple files.
  4. Click Send.

In Netscape Mail:

  1. Click New Message to open the Compose window.
  2. Fill in the To and Subject lines, and type in your message.
  3. Click the Attach button or, in Netscape 6, click in the empty Attachments box.
  4. Select your file in the Enter Files To Attach dialog and click Open.
  5. To attach multiple files, repeat Steps 3 and 4.
  6. Click Send.

E-mailing photos is clearly not brain surgery, but there are a few gotchas to watch out for.

Mailbox size limits

Most Internet Service Providers (ISPs) set a limit on each customer's mailbox. Many set a per-message limit as well as a total limit on the mailbox's contents. My ISP, for example, limits my mailbox to 10 megabytes and any piece of individual e-mail to 5M. Check with your ISP for the limits on your mailbox, but remember that your recipients' restrictions may differ.

If you send someone an e-mail which exceeds their mailbox restrictions (or yours – the restrictions apply to outgoing e-mail as well) the e-mail will be bounced. That is, you'll get a message from the ISP saying the e-mail was too large to deliver and the recipient won't get a copy. The really frustrating thing about bounced mail is that you waste time uploading the e-mail and it's not until you've completed the process your ISP will inform you it failed to work.

So, limit the size of your photo attachments: Use low-resolution photos; use compressed formats; zip photos to reduce their size; or limit yourself to one attachment per e-mail (and make sure that attachment is not too large). Unless I know my recipient can accommodate larger files, I usually limit attachments to under 2M per e-mail. Outlook and Outlook Express both display the attachment size so you can see whether you're over the limit.

Connection speed

Another reason for limiting attachment size is that it takes time to send and receive e-mail containing large attachments. If you're sending your photos to people who use slow dial-up connections, they won't appreciate receiving a dozen large photos of your cat licking its paw. Be considerate. Limit the size and number of the photos you send and, if you wish to share a lot of photos, send an e-mail first asking whether this is okay with the recipient.

Formats

You may be able to view images in JPG, TIF, PCD, BMP and other formats, but don't assume your recipients can.

When sharing photos, use JPG format unless you have an agreement with the recipient to use a different format. JPG is almost universally supported (even by Mac and Linux users). It's a compressed format, which means the same photo in JPG format is smaller than in BMP format. This is true even when you save a file with minimal ('lossless') compression, but if you're really trying to limit file size, you can save a JPG with varying degrees of compression. The greater the compression, the lower the image quality, so you'll need to play around with various compression factors to find an acceptable result. You can also reduce the file size by reducing the dimensions of the image. For instance, if you're sending an image which measures 1024 by 768 pixels to someone who always uses 640 by 480 resolution, create a copy of the image in the smaller size and send that.

Many graphics programs let you convert between formats and resize images. If you don't have one already, there's an excellent freeware program called IrfanView which does the trick beautifully, in conjunction with the IrfanView Plug-ins (make sure you install both, IrfanView first followed by the Plug-ins).

If you must send a photo in a format such as BMP or TIF, use a zipping program to compress the file first. It's also useful to zip files when you want to send multiple images in one e-mail. Just make sure your recipient knows how to handle zip files. The most popular zipping software is WinZip 8.1, but if you'd prefer a free alternative, try UltimateZip 2.6. Both these zippers have a zip-and-mail feature, which lets you compress your photos and then automatically attach them to a new message.

Using WinZip to compress and e-mail photos

WinZip makes it easy to gather together a bunch of photos, compress them and then add the compressed file to an e-mail message as an attachment.

Sharing photos online

Another way to share photos is to place them on a Web site. If you have your own site, it's a simple matter of creating a page containing your photos and any titles you wish to use, then uploading that page to your site. To position photos precisely, either use tables or, if you know how, use the positional style sheet tags. If you use a recent version of Microsoft FrontPage, try the auto-thumbnail feature, which creates small copies of your photos. (You can see an example of its use in the Step-by-step section below.) When a visitor clicks any thumbnail, the full-size image is displayed. This ensures the original page loads quickly and users only view the full images of their choice. To use auto-thumbnail:

  1. Click Insert Picture From File and select your photo.
  2. Right-click the inserted photo and select Auto-Thumbnail from the pop-up menu.

If you don't have your own site, there are a number of sites which let you create online albums you can share with the general populace or with invited guests. Check out Ofoto, which is the pick of the bunch. Australian users who want to use online photo printing services should try nineMSN Photos or Yahoo! ANZ Photos. All these services let you create online photo albums for free (and try to recoup the cost by selling you photo-related products and services). Each supplies an easy method of uploading your photos and creating multiple photo albums. Make sure you read the guidelines about photo size and format before you start uploading.

Step-by-step: Using Windows XP's photo e-mail

If you use Windows XP, you can take advantage of the operating system's built-in photo e-mail and compression. Here's how:

  1. Open the folder containing your photos, select one or more images (use Ctrl-Click to select multiple images), and click E-mail The Selected Items under File and Folder Tasks in the Task Pane. The Send Pictures Via E-mail dialog box will open.

XP adds the compressed files automatically to your e-mail - click to see full-sized image

(Click to see a full-sized image.)

  1. XP lets you reduce the size of your photos by reducing their resolution. Click the Show More Options button to see all your options. Once you've made your selections, click OK.

Note: XP does not change the size of your original photos; it merely creates copies in the new sizes and attaches those copies to your e-mail.

XP can automatically resize photos before e-mailing

  1.  XP opens a new message window in your default e-mail program, with the resized photos attached. Add a recipient's address, change the subject if you like, and insert your own text in place of XP's own terse message. Then click Send.

XP automatically adds your resized images to an email ready to complete and send.

(Click to see a full-sized image.)

© 2002, Rose Vines  

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