email is still one of the easiest ways to keep in touch with someone, however it wasn’t originally designed for sending large media files like photos.
Use this step-by-step guide to avoid some common pitfalls when sending a large number of images via email.
Although instant messaging services like whatsapp are more popular than ever, email remains the universal standard for online communications.
but not great at all: If you’ve already tried sending a lot of large attachments, you may have encountered difficulties such as message bounces, failed sends, and more. this problem only becomes more difficult as the size of the camera and smartphone image files continues to increase. For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume you have a collection of image files, probably from your compact camera’s memory card. The same suggestions can be applied to any collection of images, even from iphone/android phones or tablets, however for a large number of image files we recommend transferring them to a laptop or desktop computer first as it makes it easier. easy to handle compared to using a mobile device.
1. first, check the total size of the files you want to send
Collect or copy all the photos you want to send into a single folder on your computer. If you only want to send specific photos from a large batch, it’s worth creating a temporary folder and copying those photos to that folder for easier management. now, check the total size of the files you want to send. on windows you can do this by selecting all the files in the folder (you can press ctrl-a while in the file explorer window to select all the files), then right click on the selection and choose “properties” (for macs , see here how to check the total size).
- make a note of what the combined size is (in mb or gb), because you may need it to see if you exceed the attachment size limits for your email provider (and you can also use it to estimate the time to load below).
2. how long will it take to load?
If you have a slow or mobile internet connection, it is sometimes useful to know how long it will take to upload the file or attachment. we have created a handy little calculator to figure this out, but first check your upload speed on speedtest.net for example. now enter the total file size and upload speed to get an estimate of the upload time. 1000mb, etc)
Note that this assumes you are connecting to an internet mail service such as gmail, yahoo mail, etc. – if you are using a mail system that is on a local network such as a corporate intranet, upload speeds will typically be much faster.
- If it seems like it will take too long to load, try the next step, which can effectively reduce the loading time.
3. reduce the size of the photo if necessary
- If you’re not submitting images that will ever be printed, it’s rarely necessary to submit them as the original full-resolution versions.
- Even halving the photo’s dimensions usually doesn’t greatly reduces quality, and in many cases can even make photos look sharper (digital cameras often push the limits of their sensor resolution through interpolation when using the smaller photo size modes). large).
- This will also significantly reduce file size (and load times): you can reasonably expect files to be less than half the original size (and up to 10 times smaller if the original is saved too high quality).
You’ll probably want to use some software that can do this automatically for multiple images:
windows: A good option for batch resizing photos is irfanview. after installation, select “batch convert/rename” from the file menu. there are many options here, but all you need to do is select the image files from the file browser in the top right, then click “add” to add them to the list of images to process (small note – there seems to be a bug in irfanview where the “add” button might not work when only one file is selected (if this happens you can double click the file to add it to the list).
- Now click the “use advanced options” checkbox and then the “advanced” button next to it. this will bring up a dialog with even more options, however all that needs to be selected here is the “resize” checkbox, then in the “set new size as percentage of original” boxes, enter 50% (you’ll use this for width and height).
- click ok in the advanced settings to return to the batch conversion window. now the only other option to point to here is “output directory for result files”. this is where the newly resized images are placed, so change it if necessary. now click “start batch” and your images will be converted.
mac: You can easily resize images with the preview tool, see here for more information. note that you can select “percentage” instead of “pixels” to get more uniformly sized images.
chromebook: Batch image resizing options are currently a bit more limited on chromebooks, however you can try the free chrome store app for bulk photo resizing .
4. put all images in one file
If you have more than 5 or 6 photos to submit, it will be much easier to submit them as a single file (such as a zip file).
To create archives, we use 7-zip (windows) as it is free and high performance, however there are many options available here.
after installation, simply select all the files you want to add, right click on the group and “add to archive…” (image above). will create a single “.zip” file with all your photos.
on mac, select the files, then control-click and select “create file”. for chromebooks, see here.
If you’ve resized images before, you may have two copies of each photo (small and large), so make sure you’re only selecting the smaller versions when creating the files.
5. send the photos
files can be sent as attachments within an email, but there are some restrictions: it’s similar to the way & amp; packages in the postal system have a certain amount of capacity for items shipped.
Due to physical limitations on storage space and network bandwidth, email providers have upper limits on the maximum size of attachments that can be sent or received. For the most popular mail services, this is currently around 25MB per message, both for sending and receiving attachments.
25mb is not that generous in terms of photo and video files, but at the same time, it becomes more difficult to handle large files when they are embedded in emails. To solve this problem, most email providers offer the alternative of uploading your large files to their online storage services (for example, Google Drive) and then putting a link to the file in the email when you’re done. load. it is actually sent with the email (only the link to the files is sent), this allows sharing of files much larger than 100mb.
gmail
- start a new mail and click the paperclip icon to attach files. the size limit for attachments for gmail is 25mb, however if your file is larger than this it will ask if you want to send it. using google drive, where the file size can be up to 10 gb (10000 mb).
- if you’re sending using google drive, it will show you the files you’ve currently uploaded. so click the “upload” tab and select the file to upload again if needed, and click the blue “upload” button below.
- You will need to leave the browser tab open in either case during the load; however, it will continue to upload in the background if you simply switch to another tab or window.
- when the upload is complete, if you are attaching the file with google drive, it may ask you if you want to share this file with the recipient. clicking the default option here, “share & send” should be fine in most cases, it means that the person you are sending the file to can see that file in your google drive storage area, but not any other files you might have there (unless who has previously shared them). In this case, recipients don’t need a gmail or google account to view your attachment once it’s shared, in fact they just need the link in the email. Please note that accessing your file is like a normal attachment or image link: if the email is forwarded again, other recipients can click and access or download the attachment from google drive.
- if you select “send without sharing”, the recipient may need to take an additional step to request access to the file. this can be useful when you need to send a file link to a group of people, but only want to grant someone access if they specifically request it after clicking the link. in this case, the recipient will need to sign in to a google account (but not necessarily a gmail account) to request access.
a slightly confusing new feature in gmail is the ability to send files stored on google drive as a standard “attachment” instead of a “drive link” (see example below).
this attachment option doesn’t make much sense for files not yet in google drive as you can click the paperclip icon in gmail to upload attachments directly, however if you are in the habit of using google drive to store your files (eg chromebook users) this could be a useful option as normal attachments remain permanently with the email they were sent with, while you can delete some files on your google drive at some point, which could prevent access to shared files. sometime in the future.
outlook.com (also known as hotmail)
- create a new email, then click the “insert” option from the menu at the top. if the total size of your file is less than 25mb, select “files as attachments” and upload the file.
- if your files are larger than 25mb, you will be prompted to use onedrive, which is Microsoft’s online storage service. it’s a bit less integrated with email compared to the google version in that once you get to the onedrive page you’ll need to select the file to upload once again so if you know the file is too big to send it as an attachment, it’s best to select the “share from onedrive” option in outlook when composing your email.
- after uploading, the file will appear on the onedrive page, however now you need to go back to your email on outlook.com and select “insert” and “share from onedrive”. then you can select the file to send with the email.
yahoo mail
- although it was reported some time ago that yahoo had gotten rid of limits on email attachments, this is not exactly true. For files larger than 25MB, you’ll be prompted to use dropbox to store the file before sending the email.
- This works the same way as Google and Microsoft’s online storage services: you can access the files later as a separate virtual drive or folder on your computer, but the recipient doesn’t necessarily need any login information to be able to open the files you send them in an email.
alternatives to using email
The universal nature of email is still a great feature compared to other services: you don’t need to ask anyone what software or system they’re on before sending them files. however, many people find that dedicated file apps are a better option when they frequently share files with the same recipient or group.
- social networks and photo sharing sites such as facebook, google+, flickr, picasa and instagram. These sites will usually allow you to organize photos into albums and set access permissions for different people. they tend to be better suited for periodic and social sharing of photos, rather than sharing many photos at once.
- Messaging services such as skype can often transfer files, however this usually requires you to the other user is online at the same time.
- use online storage services like google drive, microsoft onedrive, apple icloud photo sharing and dropbox outside of email. these services are designed to make files easily accessible and can be very efficient when used to the full by each party (for example, downloading the client program on each service to add a remote folder to your system).
Image credits: waterfall photography courtesy of gareth thomas (creative commons 2.0 license by-nd). microsoft outlook icon courtesy of dakirby309.