Apart from being too large to view the whole picture on your computer screen due to it's large size, there is the problem of the time it takes to send and receive these files, especially if there are a number of them sent in a single e-mail.
People who have Broadband Internet access will not be disadvantaged by the speed of sending and receiving but will still have problems viewing the photos if they are too large to view on their screen.
NOTE: A photograph on a 10 megapixel camera will be saved at a resolution of 3648x2736 - this means that if your computer screen display is set at 1024x768 the photograph will be over three times the width of your screen and the file size will be in the order of 2.4Mb (Megabytes).The answer to the problem of sending such large photographs/files is to reduce the actual size of the photograph before it is sent. You can do this with a photo editing program if you have the knowledge to do this, but there is a far easier way, especially for a novice computer user.
By comparison, a photograph size of 1024x768 will have a file size of about 140k (kilobytes), and correspondingly an 800x600 photo would be around 92k with a 640x480 being only around 64k in size.
The easy way to do this is to use Microsoft's own feature to resize before sending.
The default resize setting is 640x480 pixels. Follow the instructions below.
(1) Navigate to the folder where your pictures are saved. This will generally be in your 'My Picture' folder, or 'Pictures' in Vista.
(2) Select the picture you want to send by first clicking it once with the left mouse button. It will appear highlighted as in the picture below.
(3) Having 'selected' you picture, now right-click on the selected picture and from the menu that appears, left-click the 'Send to Mail Recipient' option.
(4) This will have produced a new blank email with your picture attached. All you have to do now is address the e-mail and write what ever you want in the main text area. Send as normal.
(5) What do I do if I want to send several pictures at the same time then?
(6) OK - follow this sequence.
Navigate to the folder where your pictures are saved. This will generally be in your 'My Picture' folder, or 'Pictures' in Vista - same as the first method.
(7) Instead of selecting just one picture, you need to use a slightly different method.
While holding down the [Alt] key use the left mouse button to select each picture one at a time. You will see that each of them in turn becomes highlighted as shown below.
(8) When all you require have been selected, use the right-click function on one of those selected, and continue as before by selecting 'Send to Mail Recipient' from the options shown. All pictures will then be attached to a new blank e-mail.
(9) If you wanted to select ALL the pictures in one folder, you need to left-click the first one, then, while holding down the [Shift] key, left-click on the last picture. All images between those pictures will become highlighted. Continue as previously by right-clicking any one the selected pictures and select 'Send to Mail Recipient' from the options shown. - Click the 'Show more options' link to see various sizing options such as 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768.
Note also: This facility is not available in early versions of Outlook Express, but is available in Vista's 'Windows Mail' and Windows 7.
alan@webs4u.co.nz