Share your photos by e-mail

Among the many advantages of digital photography is the fact that you can easily share your photos, with a favourite method being over email. After having added your photos to a zip file so that you don’t have to select them individually as attachments, you simply have to attach the single file and email it. The receiver will then have to simply download the file, extract its contents to view the photos. When you are sending a large number of photos though, like after a party, then you may encounter some size issues.

Photos taken by digital cameras are generally large in size, as pictures these days are being taken in high resolution (millions of pixels – a figure always advertised by manufacturers). Zip files are able to contain a large number of photos, but these will still be large in size and therefore difficult to send with email systems often limiting the size of attachments. If the photos you are sending don’t need to be viewed on a large screen, you can always resize them to reduce their size – making them easier to send and zip.

To change the size of all of your photos in a lot, there are a number of programs available on the web. We will be using XnView, a free tool which can be downloaded from here.

Once you have completed the installation, simply run the program. In the left hand side, look for and select the folder where the photos you want to edit are located. In the right hand side, select the photos you want to edit with the help of the mouse or the [CTRL + A] keyboard shortcut, and then click on the "Tools" menu and "Convert...”.

In the new window which appears, click on the "Transformations" tab at the top. In the left hand frame, select the "Re-size" option. From here, i twill be possible to change the size of all of the previously selected photos, either as a percentage or from the various options offered on the ">>" button. Finally, click on the "Run" button.

UOnce the pictures have been resized, you simply have to add them to a zip file before sending them.