E-mail and Photo Attachments

Allot of folks attach photos willy-nilly to e-mails without thought or consideration. That is probably because they have not been exposed to the right way to send photos by e-mail.

Digital photos to share with family and friends require you think of several issues before and after the photos are taken. The following considerations will ensure you don’t shut down someone’s inbox and that you show consideration for the other side’s resources.

“Show-and-tel” type photos need not ever be more than 600 pixels in width to send by e-mail. Although higher resolution cameras will take photos that are 1,080-1,280 pixels in width, this is overkill for most applications.

Photos of this physical size are also very large in file size and take more time to download or upload and could fill up inboxes and possibly cause any e-mail after yours to bounce. Attaching too many photos at one time can cause the same problem or even be rejected by your connectivity provider. After resizing, include only a handful or so of attachments of this size per e-mail.

By minimizing the photos physical size to 600 pixels in width, transfers go much quicker for both sides. Any graphic program will allow you to resize/resample a graphic to any given width. Just reduce those photos you want to send by e-mail, then “file > save as” and save the reduced version with a descriptive short name.

You want to also create a folder on your hard drive to keep a backup copy of the larger versions of your photos in case the original is required again down the road.

And last but not least, always give someone a heads up before e-mailing large photo files. Best to make sure they are on the other end to download them right away and keep their inbox clear.

You may also be interested in:

• Do You Send Unannounced Attachments?
• Don’t Attach That Large File; Think First!
• Are You a Chronic MeMailer? (There is No Me in E-mail!)
• Your E-mail IS You!