by Raymond L. Marr

Created on: November 20, 2008

Sending Pictures through email in these days, with an always on Internet connection along with larger attachment options through free options such as Gmail, Hotmail and others. We as a society have come to grasp the potential of the Internet as the worlds largest book, as a place for commerce and a great library. Only recently though has it been realized that with these larger attachment options you are able to send photos. No longer do you need to go to a photo shop and have them developed, in this digital age, you point, shoot and download to the computer via a simple USB Cable. Easy to get the pictures from Camera to computer but the challenge I am sure we each have dealt with in trying to take that easily downloaded photo and adding it to an email to share with friends and family.

Certainly it seems as simple as the download but the challenge that often occurs is that the file is to large to attach, or the mail provider you are working on can only handle a max size of a picture photo. Whether you are each aware of that, a photo from a digital camera is quite large particularly high resolution consuming huge amounts of space. As the objective of the camera is to optimize for viewing, without losing detail. That is great for your eyes and you can view the picture in it's full resolution brilliance. The mail server on the other hand, has limits on how big that particular file can be when sending it via email. Here we come to it, how do you take that awesome photo from your local computer to the right size and attach to an email and send it on it's merry way way to Aunties email box.

There are a couple options at this point, that is before you can even set it up and attach it to the email to your family, Some of the common ways may include using a basic graphics program to resize it to a resolution of 640x480 at the max as that offers good quality with reduced size and increased compatibility as many do not have a very high resolution on the computer at home. One option then is to simply use a basic graphic program such as Paint, which if you are running a Windows Computer will most likely reside in the accessories menu or entertainment menu, with that program you are able to change the image dimensions (1024x768 to 640x480 ) by simply going to the image menu and using image attributes are able to modify the file. That is one of the simpler options, there are others. Some have mentioned file sharing sites, which with the world connected so much more now has become a very important part of the process. The question there is will that Photo Sharing site survive? I mean when you consider that you are taking the pictures you have taken and putting them on a server somewhere if that site goes down you lose them. You have been forewarned, the nice thing about these photo sharing sites is that it enables you to right click and send to someone while the site automatically resizes it for you and sends it on the way.

In this article we only explore a couple of ways, try them out and see which works better for you and for your needs, certainly advice can be offered but it is up to you and the person in the mirror to reach a consensus as to what works best. Of course that is always up for revision, as you become more comfortable with the options that are at hand and are simple look beyond that to additional possibilities.

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