#184 May, 2006

Photos wrecked my email

... the end of Netiquette

I recently had a discussion with an 'over zealous' Mac iLifer who seriously rebuked me for chiding him about sending huge pictures in email, or putting a dozen huge pictures on a web page.

I had said:
      ... send links to the photos and not the actual photos -- unless you make them smaller!

He said:
      "All of the people on my list are technology-savvy and have fast internet so it doesn't matter ... besides, everyone has fast internet these days, nobody cares. Get up to speed."

While this may be true for "those" people, it's certainly not true for "all" people... particularly those who wish to practice proper Netiquette.

People who shovel photos into email without first properly sizing them for email delivery would probably cram into elevators before occupants step off. They go 80 in a 55 mile zone because they're in a hurry. They sneeze at the salad bar and fart at the dinner table with the Queen. They are probably thinking ... "I am more important than you, step aside and let me through."

When you think about it -- if so many people weren't glutting the bandwidth with fat email, bloated with photos and daedal code, people wouldn't have needed 'faster' internet in the first place.

Some "manners" don't go out of style no matter how much of a hurry you're in or whether or not the other party minds. So it's true with email and the internet.

Netiquette For Emailing Photos:

RULE #1 Crop away parts that are not important.
RULE #2 Resize the picture so it FITS.
RULE #3 Save at a lower resolution.
RULE #4 Save with email-friendly name

RULE #1 Crop away parts that are not important.

So you want all 300 people in your email program to see your little darling as she performs in the school play? You don't need to send a raw digital camera photo of the entire auditorium. Zero in on the subject and crop 'til you drop. (Yes, you can leave in just enough background to show a sense of "place" but focus on the subject.)
      Crop Relentlessly

RULE #2 Resize the picture so it FITS.

Nothing is more irritating than getting a photo in email where you can only see about the top-left 20% of the image. Scroll and scroll until you see an eye. Scroll and scroll until you see nostrils. Just because you have a 25-inch monitor set to 5,000 resolution doesn't mean the recipient will. Sure, you love to look at your little darling at larger than life proportions -- but others may (probably) won't. If the recipient wants a larger image for printing, they can always ask.
* Here's what it should NOT be
* Here's what it SHOULD be

MEASURE the image: your image viewer or image program will have a menu or info function that allows you to see the actual dimensions of the image.

It's SPAM if it measures more than 600 pixels in any direction (That's about 8 inches!)

On many email viewers and monitors 600 is too big for the entire image to be seen in one screen. They have to scroll. 400 pixels is better. Besides, some email hosts like AOL now limit the size of emails! Your recipient may not even get the email -- wasting your time and bandwidth.

RULE #3 Save at a lower resolution.

Your image viewer or image program will have a menu or info function that allows you to change the resolution. Email photos should NEVER be greater than 72 pixels per inch. (96 for some Windoze machines.) Your digital camera could be shooting at 140, 160, 180, 240 or as much as 300. Those images can easily be ten-times the size with basically the same view. These take as long as ten-times the seconds to download, and view.

ALWAYS save as a "JPG" or "JPEG" file. NEVER tif, or eps. (And, never as a GIF, because that will destroy the color.

RULE #4 Save with email-friendly name

So all your recipients got the email, right? So the picture was downloaded to the computer, put who-knows-where, but what will they find?

It's truly irritating when you go back to find the picture of the little darling and you can't. That's because the name of the file is "DC44256-23.AAG23.jpg" ... oh, I guess that really means "little darling" right?

Remember that if you've embedded the photo into the email, then it's sent to the recipient right along with the text of the email. Later it will just clutter the hard drive -- so make it easy to find.

Short names please, NO SPACES, or special characters, and always the extension dot-jpg. If you want a space, then use the underscore_key. like_this.jpg.

Win friends

If you follow these simple rules, your recipients will have a much better experience and will probably not dread seeing your name in their incoming mail box. If you don't know how to follow Netiquette, then perhaps it's better if you don't send the photos at all.

1) Small photos are better seen in a single window
2) Small photos send a lot faster through email
3) Small photos take much less room on the computer
4) Small photos hog much less bandwidth

Your viewers will download them faster, see them immediately, and will enjoy them a lot more.

Good etiquette did not go out of style -- nor did good Netiquette.

Thanks for reading...

Fred Showker

smile Editor: DTG Magazine and 60-Second Windows contact me !

See: my vintage (very old) article: "How NOT to send photos in email"

A more complete tutorial can be found at: fay.iniminimo.com (Windows)

Wikipedia's definition of Netiquette

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