Tips for e‑mailing photos
In this articleDigital photography and the Internet have combined to shorten the time it takes to share photos from days to minutes. Using e‑mail is the most direct way to quickly share those photos with the people you care about most. This article will show you the best way to format your photos for sending them in e‑mail and how to use Windows Live Mail to easily share previews of photos and larger versions online.
Bigger isn't necessarily better
When sending photos in e‑mail, the size of the photos becomes important. Many Internet service providers (ISPs) restrict the size of your e‑mail inbox, and photos can quickly take up space. If you include too many photos that are too large in size, your message might not make it out of your own inbox, and even if it does, there’s a chance your recipient’s inbox might block the message.
What's more, many users still use slower dial-up connections to the Internet, as opposed to faster broadband connections such as cable or DSL. If you send large photos to dial-up users, it can take a long time for images to download and appear, and this can be frustrating for the people you send them to. So send the smallest pictures you can, and if you do send large pictures, only send a few at a time.
How to send resized photos in e‑mail
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| You can see the estimated storage size for each photo size option |
You can use Windows Photo Gallery to attach pictures to an e‑mail message and automatically compress the photos (reduce their file size) so that the e‑mail arrives more quickly and the pictures take up less space on the recipient's computer. The original pictures are not affected, so you don't have to make separate smaller copies just for e‑mail.
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| | 1.
| Open Windows Photo Gallery by clicking the Start button  , clicking All Programs, and then clicking Windows Photo Gallery. | | 2.
| Click the picture that you want to send in e‑mail. To select more than one item, hold down the CTRL key while you click the items that you want to select. | | 3.
| On the toolbar, click E‑mail. | | 4.
| In the Attach Files dialog box, select a picture size for your recipients from the Picture size list. Medium is usually a good choice, but if you are sending many photos, you might choose a smaller picture size to reduce the overall size of the e‑mail message. | | 5.
| Click Attach. Windows opens a new e‑mail message and attaches your picture to the message using your preferred e‑mail program. | | 6.
| Enter the e‑mail addresses of the recipients, type a subject, and write a brief message. When you have finished composing the e‑mail message, click Send. |
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Do more with e‑mailed photos using Windows Live Mail
Sending photos from Windows Photo Gallery works just fine, but it sends the photos as attachments that the recipient must click individually to open, which makes it tough to browse the photos all at once.
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| Photo attached to an e‑mail message |
To present resized photos in the message, you can use a feature in Windows Live Mail called Photo e‑mail. You can download Windows Live Mail for free online at the Microsoft website for Windows Live.
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| Send a Photo e‑mail using Windows Live Mail |
You can quickly send e‑mails of photos in a variety of size and layout styles with Photo e‑mail. You can autocorrect and rotate photos; add effects, such as borders; add captions; and include any text in the e‑mail that you want to send.
If you create a Photo e‑mail while signed in to Windows Live Mail using a Windows Live ID, there's an added bonus: the option for recipients to view the photos as a slide show hosted by the Windows Live Spaces website. The people you send e‑mail to can view larger versions of the photos if they want to, and they can also download the larger versions at their leisure—all without them having to enter any user name or password to view the pictures. Plus, there’s no uploading or managing by you—you get the benefit of posting photos online to a website without any of the fuss.
If you already have a MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger, or Microsoft Passport account, you've already got a Windows Live account. You can go online to sign in now with your current account information to start using Windows Live. If you don't have a Windows Live ID, you can get one online at the Microsoft website for Windows Live.
| To use Photo e‑mail |
| | 1.
| Open Windows Live Mail. | | 2.
| Click the arrow next to the New button, and then click Photo e‑mail. | | 3.
| In the Add Photos dialog, browse to the folder containing the photos you want to include, click the picture that you want to send in e‑mail, and then click Add. To select more than one item, hold down the CTRL key while you click the items that you want to select. | | 4.
| Keep adding photos until you are done, and then click Done. | | 5.
| On the toolbar, click Layout, and then choose how you want the e‑mail message to look and how large you want the images in the message to be. The larger the images, the larger the file will be.  | | Configure the layout of the Photo e‑mail message |
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| If you create a Photo e‑mail while signed in to Windows Live Mail using a Windows Live ID, on the toolbar, click Photos. Choose the resolution of the photos that are uploaded to the Windows Live Spaces website when you click Send. The resolution you choose determines the quality of the photos when viewed as a slide show, but it doesn’t affect the size of the e‑mail message itself. For example, you can send small thumbnails in the e‑mail, but upload large versions that people can view (and download) if they want to.  | | Choose the resolution of the uploaded images |
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| Enter the e‑mail addresses of the recipients, type a subject, and write a brief message. When you have finished composing the e mail message, click Send. |
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Viewing a slide show
When your friends and family receive your Photo e‑mail, they’ll see the photos in the layout and size that you chose. That alone is great, but if you created the Photo e‑mail while signed in to Windows Live Mail using a Windows Live ID, they can also view the photos presented as a slide show, and then download larger versions of the images if they choose to do so.
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| Play a slide show from the Photo e‑mail message |
When they click Play slideshow, a Windows Live Spaces website opens up that displays the images in sequential order. The recipient can vary the speed at which the photos display, download the larger picture from the website, and view larger-resolution versions of the file.
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| Change the viewing speed or download a higher-resolution picture |
Help and How-to
