(no subject)
Mar. 29th, 2007 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickBecause I keep running into serious deficiencies on this front in various areas of life, I present the sorely-needed Definitive Guide for Telling if Your Image Attachment is Appropriate For Email. There are guidelines, an example, and a free software suggestion to help those who are confuzzled. At last, here is help for people who don't know jack about images PICTURES.
Snark ahoy, but also some useful information for those who do not really understand all the technical crap about pictures and have trouble telling if they are doing an OK job of generating reasonable email attachments to show folks the newborn colt or the daughter's school play or the deck you added to the back of the house.
Rules Governing the Sending of Pictures as Email Attachments
General Rule #1: Unless everyone that you are sending the image to has a broadband connection, the maximum size of a file that you can courteously attach is 1 Mb... and that's only for REALLY INTERESTED PEOPLE like grandparents. If you are sending the file to less-interested parties (friends, old roommates, cousins) of unknown internet connectivity, the maximum size file attachment that you should send is 100Kb. If you are NOT SURE of the internet connectivity of the people you are sending to, send 100Kb or less. (This limit is per email. You should not try to 'get around' this limitation by sending five or six emails in quick succession, either. That's just rude.)
General Rule #2: The max dimensions of your image should be 800x600 unless you know for sure that everyone you are sending to has his or her screen set to a larger resolution.
General Rule #3: If, after reading the tutorial below, you are still unable to meet General Rule #1 and General Rule #2, sign up for flickr and tell people to go look at your photosets by sending them the web address. Do not send pictures through the email.
There are two things that you need to keep track of about your image. They are (1) the number of bytes and (2) the dimensions in pixels. You need to look at BOTH of these criteria to make sure that your picture will be easily and happily viewable by the recipients.
The first thing, the number of bytes in the image, is measured in bytes, Kb, or Mb. The number of bytes is what determines how long it takes for a dialup person to download the image from the ISP's mail server. (Even now, in 2007, approximately half of the United States population with internet access is using dialup. So yeah, this is still important.) For the non-technical: bytes are smallest. One kilobyte is 1,024 bytes. Kilobytes are 1024 times BIGGER than bytes. One megabyte is 1024 Kilobytes. Megabytes are 1024 times BIGGER than Kilobytes. As a general rule, you should aim for the smaller side of things. Size: (smallest) bytes -> Kb -> Mb (biggest).
The second thing, the dimensions in pixels (abbreviated px), tells how much screen real estate the picture takes up. This is important because if you send a picture that is 1500x1600 px to someone who has his screen set at 1024 x 768, the whole picture will not fit on the screen and the person may not know to scroll left/right up/down to see the rest of the picture. You want to make your image fit on the screen all at once, so you check the px dimensions. Fairly recent statistics on this suggest that images should not be larger than 800 x 600 for comfortable visibilty by most people. (Something like 75% of the internet using population has a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or better but a lot of that is taken up with toolbars and other crap. 800 x 600 will make images that fit without scrolling on the screens of most users.)
Yikes! That's really technical shit, Miss Internet Smarty-Pants! I'm no geek. How am I supposed to find out the bytes and the dimensions in px?
Calm down. It's not hard and you don't need special software. (The following directions assume a Microsoft Windows operating system because that is the OS likely to be used by most of the people who need help on this subject.) To find out the bytes of an image and its pixel dimensions, you put your mouse on the picture and right click. That usually gives you a drop-down menu of choices. On the dropdown menu, put the mouse on Properties (it's at the bottom) and left click that choice once. Here's an image to try it on:
For the image above, the drop-down box will look something like this:
The parts you need are Width and Height (those are the dimensions in pixels of the image) and Size of File, which is given in bytes, Kb, or Mb. (If, for some reason, you get bytes, you can estimate Kb by dividing by 1000. It's close enough for most purposes, but the anal retentive among us can also divide bytes by 1024 to get the exact Kb.)
On the above picture, the dimensions are 1028 x 1040 and the file size is 121.28 Kb. This image is NOT OK to be attached to an email by way of being too large in terms of screen real estate AND in terms of file size.
Oh noes!!! I *have* to be able to send it. It's a really pretty picture and I totally have GOT to show it to my aunt Thelma who lives in Lower Whinging! She'll luv it!!1!1 What can I do?!?
You resize the image. Resizing the image is not particularly difficult and does not require pay-for software. My personal weapon of choice in the image-resizing wars is Irfanview, a red squashed kitty thing that lets you resize/resample images even if your IQ is closer to room temperature than boiling in degrees Fahrenheit. Fer shurr, it will help you with this, and it's free.
To resize, I open the file in irfanview and I go to the Image menu at the top. I roll down the menu to Resize/Resample. I select that option and I set width (it's a dialogue box that comes up) to 500 px. Irfanview *immediately* shows me the resized image, which I can accept or discard. If I like it, and I usually do, I can immediately save it (under a new name) for a revised picture that still looks OK but is a lot more suitable for emailing.
See?
This image, the same picture but resized/resampled as per the paragraph above, is 500 x 505 and 47.89 Kb, OK for email. Aunt Thelma and her shitty-ass winME computer on dialup will be so pleased!
Snark ahoy, but also some useful information for those who do not really understand all the technical crap about pictures and have trouble telling if they are doing an OK job of generating reasonable email attachments to show folks the newborn colt or the daughter's school play or the deck you added to the back of the house.
Rules Governing the Sending of Pictures as Email Attachments
General Rule #1: Unless everyone that you are sending the image to has a broadband connection, the maximum size of a file that you can courteously attach is 1 Mb... and that's only for REALLY INTERESTED PEOPLE like grandparents. If you are sending the file to less-interested parties (friends, old roommates, cousins) of unknown internet connectivity, the maximum size file attachment that you should send is 100Kb. If you are NOT SURE of the internet connectivity of the people you are sending to, send 100Kb or less. (This limit is per email. You should not try to 'get around' this limitation by sending five or six emails in quick succession, either. That's just rude.)
General Rule #2: The max dimensions of your image should be 800x600 unless you know for sure that everyone you are sending to has his or her screen set to a larger resolution.
General Rule #3: If, after reading the tutorial below, you are still unable to meet General Rule #1 and General Rule #2, sign up for flickr and tell people to go look at your photosets by sending them the web address. Do not send pictures through the email.
There are two things that you need to keep track of about your image. They are (1) the number of bytes and (2) the dimensions in pixels. You need to look at BOTH of these criteria to make sure that your picture will be easily and happily viewable by the recipients.
The first thing, the number of bytes in the image, is measured in bytes, Kb, or Mb. The number of bytes is what determines how long it takes for a dialup person to download the image from the ISP's mail server. (Even now, in 2007, approximately half of the United States population with internet access is using dialup. So yeah, this is still important.) For the non-technical: bytes are smallest. One kilobyte is 1,024 bytes. Kilobytes are 1024 times BIGGER than bytes. One megabyte is 1024 Kilobytes. Megabytes are 1024 times BIGGER than Kilobytes. As a general rule, you should aim for the smaller side of things. Size: (smallest) bytes -> Kb -> Mb (biggest).
The second thing, the dimensions in pixels (abbreviated px), tells how much screen real estate the picture takes up. This is important because if you send a picture that is 1500x1600 px to someone who has his screen set at 1024 x 768, the whole picture will not fit on the screen and the person may not know to scroll left/right up/down to see the rest of the picture. You want to make your image fit on the screen all at once, so you check the px dimensions. Fairly recent statistics on this suggest that images should not be larger than 800 x 600 for comfortable visibilty by most people. (Something like 75% of the internet using population has a screen resolution of 1024 x 768 or better but a lot of that is taken up with toolbars and other crap. 800 x 600 will make images that fit without scrolling on the screens of most users.)
Yikes! That's really technical shit, Miss Internet Smarty-Pants! I'm no geek. How am I supposed to find out the bytes and the dimensions in px?
Calm down. It's not hard and you don't need special software. (The following directions assume a Microsoft Windows operating system because that is the OS likely to be used by most of the people who need help on this subject.) To find out the bytes of an image and its pixel dimensions, you put your mouse on the picture and right click. That usually gives you a drop-down menu of choices. On the dropdown menu, put the mouse on Properties (it's at the bottom) and left click that choice once. Here's an image to try it on:
For the image above, the drop-down box will look something like this:
The parts you need are Width and Height (those are the dimensions in pixels of the image) and Size of File, which is given in bytes, Kb, or Mb. (If, for some reason, you get bytes, you can estimate Kb by dividing by 1000. It's close enough for most purposes, but the anal retentive among us can also divide bytes by 1024 to get the exact Kb.)
On the above picture, the dimensions are 1028 x 1040 and the file size is 121.28 Kb. This image is NOT OK to be attached to an email by way of being too large in terms of screen real estate AND in terms of file size.
Oh noes!!! I *have* to be able to send it. It's a really pretty picture and I totally have GOT to show it to my aunt Thelma who lives in Lower Whinging! She'll luv it!!1!1 What can I do?!?
You resize the image. Resizing the image is not particularly difficult and does not require pay-for software. My personal weapon of choice in the image-resizing wars is Irfanview, a red squashed kitty thing that lets you resize/resample images even if your IQ is closer to room temperature than boiling in degrees Fahrenheit. Fer shurr, it will help you with this, and it's free.
To resize, I open the file in irfanview and I go to the Image menu at the top. I roll down the menu to Resize/Resample. I select that option and I set width (it's a dialogue box that comes up) to 500 px. Irfanview *immediately* shows me the resized image, which I can accept or discard. If I like it, and I usually do, I can immediately save it (under a new name) for a revised picture that still looks OK but is a lot more suitable for emailing.
See?
This image, the same picture but resized/resampled as per the paragraph above, is 500 x 505 and 47.89 Kb, OK for email. Aunt Thelma and her shitty-ass winME computer on dialup will be so pleased!
