E-Mailing Photos Need Help

[Buckeye]

Hi -

Could someone please lend me a hand with e-mailing digital photos? I use a DSLR camera and the jpeg photo files I want to send are large. If I want to send someone 20+ photos, I end up parceling them out 2 at a time because my yahoo mail can't handle any more than that. The process is slow and inefficient. I don't know much about file compression or if that is necessary. I did manage to compress a video I wanted to e-mail, but it was still too big for my yahoo mail to handle.

I know everyone that shoots with a DSLR camera must have this same problem. I really hope I can get some input on variable ways to do this.

Thanks a lot,
Anita a/k/a "The Technological Dinosaur"

[FootLoose]

You could try uploading your photos to something like dropbox and then sending your friends a link. Then they could choose which photos they would like to download to their computer.

Or you could upload your photos to a site like Flikr and your friends could view them there.

[nimitzbenedicto]

Check out gmail.com, they can send/handle large files.

HTH

[Andrew1]

If the receivers of your photos are looking at them on screen and not printing them then right-click and resize them. They won't see the difference.

[Andrew76]

Haha! All great advice! Because that's exactly what I do!

If the recipient doesn't need large files, I just resize them, and send many in a single email as Andrew mentioned.

I use Gmail, and if the recipient also does, you can either send several large files, or use one of their products called Google Drive. As Victor mentioned.

And, for the most part, I use my Drop Box account,as Greg mentioned. Where you can upload virtually whatever you want. Their free account allows you to upload and share more than most people would ever use. But if it's not enough, for a fee you can expand that to more than anyone would ever use!

[Colin Southern]

I just use Google Drive; they give you up to 15GB for free - then you can just upload to them - share them - and then send the recipients a link to download them. Also ties in with gmail if they wish.

If they're just for screen display then resizing to around 1200px wide is generally enough, and drops them down from 3 to 5MB down to around 1/10th that size.

[Buckeye]

Thanks very much to each of you for the helpful ideas. I will give them a try and see what works best. I sure do appreciate your help.
Anita

[Black Pearl]

I'll second DropBox - a brilliant service.

[James G]

I too use Dropbox with no problems.

[davidedric]

Another alternative, if you don't want to be setting accounts up, is to use the free service at www.wetransfer.com . It will accept up to 2Gb of attachments, and notifies you when the recipient has downloaded them.

Dave

[Donald]

Up to now, I've used Mediafire as a file sharing resource. However, I've just installed Google Drive and used it to put the images up for PP Challenge #23, which you can find here. So, why not go over there and see how easy you find to download, say, the JPG. I found Google Drive very easy to use and am interested to get feedback from people on here as to how easy it is to download the files.

You could even try the Challenge!

[Didace]

To each his own, but I wouldn't trust Google with my files. Check the terms of service and what they think they own. If they can't use it now you can be sure they will change later.

[Colin Southern]

To each his own, but I wouldn't trust Google with my files. Check the terms of service and what they think they own. If they can't use it now you can be sure they will change later.

These are topics that seem to come up from time to time, but I think it's important to differentiate between theory and practice; in theory a lot of service providers can do a lot of things, but in practice, doing what people theorise would simply be commercial suicide. And Google aren't about to commit commercial suicide.

[jcuknz]

To me the suggestions above are pretty wooly ....
Firstly you need to guess what size screen the recipient is likely to have.
Next imagine the screen with all the junk on it that stays there a bit like CiC the site name at top emotions on right and so on.
The actual room to view the photo is quite small if you don't want the recipient to have to scroll.

Personally based on those reasons I have set on a picture 700 pixels wide by around 500 high.

Re-sizing the camera file to that size is likely to reduce the file size to around 300 to 400Kb. maybe less. File size depends on image content and varies considerably.

If you want the file to be smaller rest assured that it is unlikely to make much difference if you compress to 100Kb, some photo sites had that as their maxumum not so long ago, and even at 40-50Kb one can hardly notice any difference. when viewed at 700 pixels.

This is my practice though I can see that if you want to transmit camera sized files some of the suggestions above are valid but for personal exchange of images quite unneccesary.

One important point ... if you follow my suggestion do not 'save' the result of the resize/compression as this will over write your original.... the safe way is to 'save as' where you are prompted to slightly change the file name, I add a W to the file name. You can also specify the system then[ jpg,png etc.]

[Black Pearl]

To me the suggestions above are pretty wooly ....
Firstly you need to guess what size screen the recipient is likely to have.
Next imagine the screen with all the junk on it that stays there a bit like CiC the site name at top emotions on right and so on.
The actual room to view the photo is quite small if you don't want the recipient to have to scroll.

Personally based on those reasons I have set on a picture 700 pixels wide by around 500 high.

Re-sizing the camera file to that size is likely to reduce the file size to around 300 to 400Kb. maybe less. File size depends on image content and varies considerably.

If you want the file to be smaller rest assured that it is unlikely to make much difference if you compress to 100Kb, some photo sites had that as their maxumum not so long ago, and even at 40-50Kb one can hardly notice any difference. when viewed at 700 pixels.

This is my practice though I can see that if you want to transmit camera sized files some of the suggestions above are valid but for personal exchange of images quite unneccesary.

One important point ... if you follow my suggestion do not 'save' the result of the resize/compression as this will over write your original.... the safe way is to 'save as' where you are prompted to slightly change the file name, I add a W to the file name. You can also specify the system then[ jpg,png etc.]

At what point did the OP say they were for screen viewing?

They are trying to send large jpeg files but their IP has email size restrictions therefor suggestions like DropBox/Google Drive etc are anything but wooly.

[Buckeye]

Thanks everyone for all the helpful suggestions for large file transfer. I tried www.wetransfer.com and my large video file transferred flawlessly. It was a bit slow, but well worth the wait. I may use some of the other suggested methods for future large photo mailing. This forum sure is great!

[jcuknz]

They are trying to send large jpg files but the key point is do they need to and that was not established in post #1 rather a lack of knowledge about how to produce files to meet their servers requirements. I pointed out the difference in my reply which you obviously ignored ... but since I recently jumped in through not reasding a thread properly I cannot really throw stones.

[drjuice]

I'm with the Andrews on this one. In general, I never give up a full-blown, 30MB+ image to anybody. I resize down to a maximum dimension of 1024 (sometimes high, sometimes wide), usually to .png, using FastStone Image Viewer. Then, if it's multiple pictures, I make a gallery page or pages (max 20 images per page, 250 pixels in the maximum dimension), which has the date the images were taken and the general topic at the top. Each image has the camera generated image fileid under it, including the file type (aka file extension). Each image in the gallery is linked to the larger image. Then, the entire gallery is uploaded to my webserver and placed in the appropriate directory and I send the link to the appropriate email address or online list or forum. An early example of the gallery page, WITHOUT the links to the 1024 pixel images and WITH .jpg files rather than .png files, can be found at:

http://4114us.net/natparks/Assateagu...ntGallery2.htm

BTW - If I have only one or two images, I generate a .png version at 1024 in the maximum dimension and give the person who wants to see the picture a raw link to their location on one of my websites.

FYI - I generate the web page in pure HTML because I wanted to be able to use the code on, literally, any website to which I have access. And, I actually generate the HTML using a macro I wrote using My Favorite Text Editor (so called because I don't want to get into promoting or supporting a $$$ generating organization).

Hope this helps.

virginia

[Black Pearl]

I regularly send large files to clients for whom a 1024 sized .png would be no use what so ever. If I am supplying files to be used commercially then they need to be large and as high a quality as is required for the end purpose - for this DropBox is still my preferred choice.