If you use Thunderbird, save yourself a lot of time and effort when you want to send digital photos via email. With this method below, there is no need to manually make each image smaller – the computer does it all for you.
The problem
You want to email one or more large photos taken on your digital camera to your friends. In total, the size of the images is probably between 2MB and 20MB. That's too much for an email – as a rough guide, I avoid sending emails over 4MB in size and preferably under 2MB.
The solution
You do not need to edit each photo in Photoshop/ACDSee/Picasa or any other image editing program. All you need to do is locate the images on your hard disk using Windows Explorer. Then select the images you wish to send (you can use Ctrl and/or Shift to select multiple images).
Once the files are highlighted in blue, right-click one of them. Choose "Send To" then choose "Mail Recipient". (Click the images below to see larger versions).
Then click "Show more options…" and choose the size of the images you wish to send – about 800px by 600px is usually fine – and click OK.
Hey presto, your images have been resized and are already attached to a new email!
In this example, the total file size of 4 photos was reduced from 11.8MB to just 387KB. Your recipients will be much happier 🙂
Notes
- This does not alter the size of your original photos. (Smaller file are created temporarily and your original photos are left as they are).
- I use Thunderbird (and highly recommend it). I do not know if this technique works with other email programs such as Outlook or Outlook Express.