Sending pictures to mailing lists

The photo files coming out of your camera are good for printing (very high resolution) but are horrible (for many reasons) to send to large numbers of people on mailing lists.

Almost any image program will allow you to do a "save as" command (File menu), giving you options to shrink the file down. Experiment with the settings and then check the new file size. Make sure you use " save as" so that you do not destroy the original. You should be able to get a picture file down around 50 KB and have it look good on the computer screen. [Technically, you should be able to get the resolution to 72 dpi (dots per inch) and a pixel width of ~ 640]. A New York Times' tech Q&A has some tips on how to shrink photos.

Platform specific instructions

Linux

If you're a Linux user, you already know how to do this    ;-)

Seriously, some options include the GIMP (GPL), commercial offerings, e.g., Lightzone (free) and RAW photo processing -- Raw Therapee (GPL). Here's a nice tutorial.

Mac

iPhoto -- select the photo and click the e-mail icon at the bottom of the window; a box will pop up asking if you'd like to shrink the image for e-mailing.

Apple mail -- in a new message window, click the "Attach" button to add a photo file, or drag a photo file icon (from the Finder) to the message window. At the bottom of the message window, it shows how large the messgae will be. You can adjust the size using the "Image Size" menu at the lower right side of the message window.

If you spend a lot of time working with photos, want a powerful graphics program, but can't afford to buy Photoshop, check out Graphic Converter <http://www.lemkesoft.com/>.

Windows

I do not have Windows to test these so if you have a better solution or suggestions, please let me know.

Try this:

• Right click on an image file and select "edit"
• This will open the file in the MS Paint program
• "Image" menu -> select "Stretch/Skew"
• Choose (equal) horizontal & vertical percents (try at least 50%)
• "File" menu -> select "Save as"

Now, locate the newly saved file and check the size (right click and choose "Properties"). If the file size is < 200 KB, you're set. If not, retrace the above steps and try larger percentages.

There are many free or inexpensive image editing programs. You might start with Microsoft's "Image Resizer," available here.

or,

• Portable GIMP (free)
• Picasa photo-management program (free):

There are also some online image editors, such as:

• JPEG-wizard
• Phixz

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