How to Email Photos: Picassa and Windows Live Photo Gallery

I get a lot of questions about the best way to share photos on-line. The first thought for many people is "How do I email photos?" That used to be the worst way to share photos. Most of us have, at some point gotten an email with huge photo files attached. The pictures are way too big to view on a computer. Some e-mailers have restrictions on file sizes so your original photos may not even go through. So the first piece of advice about sharing photos is to NOT email the original huge pictures. This is especially true if your goal is to allow your recipient to just look at the pictures on a computer screen. If you do need to get an original to a friend or family member so that they can use it to make a large print you can email the original file but there are better ways to get the file to them. For email the key thing to remember is that the photo needs to be re-sized - both to make it fit on a computer screen and to make the actual file small enough to send out.

Both Microsoft and Google have come up with pretty good solutions for emailing photos. If you download the free Picassa program from Google you just highlight a photo (or photos) that you want to send. Then you click on the email button at the bottom. A box will pop up asking whether you want to send the photo(s) using Google mail or your default email program. Whichever you choose, Picassa will resize the photo and prepare an email for you to send out.

Microsoft has an even better solution. If you download the free email program Windows Live Mail, you can send "photomail". You do need to have a Windows Live ID. If you already have hotmail or msnmail then you already have the ID you need. You can run Windows Live Mail and choose Add Pictures, then choose the pictures on your computer that you want to send. Google's Picassa and other programs choose a size for you. With Windows Live Mail you have all sorts of options for having the photos in your email appear small, medium or large. But the story gets even better. Windows Live Mail will send the smaller versions to your email recipient. It will also upload and store larger versions on Microsoft servers, at least for a while. Thus your recipient can run a slide show or even download larger versions of your photos for printing. They really have it all covered - this is the best way to send photos by email. You will also want to download Microsoft's program Windows Live Photo Gallery. This is an extremely useful free program for managing your photos and even doing some fundamental editing. It's essentially a huge improvement over the photo handling capabilities that are built-in to Vista and XP. With the built-in Windows functionality you can right click a photo, choose Send to Mail Recipient and have the photo resized or embedded in photomail (if you have Windows Live Mail). With Windows Live Photo Gallery you choose a photo or photos and click on the email button at the top of the program.