Inserting an Image Directly into Your E-mail

Sending an image as an attachment when e-mailing a friend is fine most of the time. But, what if you want to e-mail someone an advertisement, perhaps a full page image announcing a sale your store is having? Rather than requiring the recipient to have to open the email, then take another step to download the page, it would be much more hard-hitting if the page appears and pops up as soon as the e-mail is opened. From a business standpoint, having the image right there when an e-mail is opened helps ensure your message will be read. If the recipient has to perform an extra step of downloading and attachment, there is increased risk that your announcement will not be read.

Here's how you can place an image right into the body of an e-mail. That image can simply be a photo your sending to Aunt Harriet, or it can be a complete full-color advertisement or newsletter.

Using a word processing or desktop page publishing program, create your page with text, graphics and photos. When completed, export it as a JPEG or GIF image.

Normally, e-mail programs cannot send an image that's on your hard drive. The image must either be on your e-mail's server or the URL (Internet address) of that image must be known.

Fortunately, a free website, www.photobucket.com, will allow you to upload the image to their server (you will have to create an account, but it's free - you just need to make a user name and password). It's easy to see how to upload your image. Just follow their instructions. Once your image is uploaded, it will appear as a thumbnail on the screen. After a few seconds, an "Image Link Code" box will appear under your image. If this box doesn't appear after a few seconds, then double click on the image, and a bigger version of the box will be displayed to the right of the image.

The box will display four text fields. Next, copy the text that's in the "Direct Link" field (the second box down from the top).

Launch your own e-mail program. Select "New" to compose a new message. After filling out the usual "TO:" and "Message" fields, place the cursor in the body of the e-mail message area.

If you want to type some text before or after the image, you can do that now. Then place your cursor at the place in the body of your e-mail where you want the image to appear.

Set the format to "HTML and Text". Click on the "Insert Image" icon (or text, whichever your program supports), then Paste. The image will appear, and you're ready to send the email.

Photobucket even has some tools for resizing and retouching the image.

Another way to insert an image is to first add it as an attachment to your e-mail. Then, when you click on your "Insert Image" icon a menu will show the image as a choice to be selected. The drawback to this method, of course, is that the image not only appears in the e-mail's body, but must also travel along as an attachment.