You have tried to e-mail my vacation photos to a friend, but the e-mail provider rejected the message for being too large. How can you make the photos smaller?
Most e-mail services put a limit on the size of an attachment you can send. Usually, it's 5 or 10 Megabytes, and that's barely enough for a few high-resolution photos. For on-screen viewing, photos don't need to be that large. If you shrink them down to 800 pixels on a side, you can easily send 20 or more photos per e-mail message.
My favorite free utility for resizing a batch of photos is K Studio's Resize!. To use it, first select the folder containing the digital images you want to resize. Next, choose the image quality ("Decent" quality is fine for casual screen viewing.) Then, select the way you want the photos to be resized. You have three choices
- Proportional. Shrinks your photos by a specified percentage amount.
- Box. Allows you to specify a maximum width or height for your photos.
- Independent. Allows you to specify the exact height and width.
When I'm sending snapshots by e-mail, I usually choose Box resizing and set the maximum height and width to 800 pixels, since that ensures the entire image can be viewed on-screen without scrolling.
Once you've made your settings, click Go.
Resize! will process your images and create a new folder with the resized images, which you can now e-mail to your friend
