So you’ve snapped some great pics on your digital camera and managed to download them to your computer. You would really like to share them other people but there’s one problem, the size of the pictures is too big to email. This often happens when digital cameras capture pictures at a high resolution so they look good if you have them printed, but if you want to send them by email it’s important to reduce the size so that they transfer faster and don’t fill up the recipient’s inbox. Most email providers also impose file size limits so if you make your pictures smaller then you can send many more per email. Another reason to shrink your pictures, especially if they are really large, is to make it possible for the recipient to view the entire picture on their screen at once.

Windows Vista has a built-in utility that will resize, optimize, and even email a set of pictures all without changing your originals. It is very easy to do and only takes a couple of minutes.

Steps to Resize and Optimize Pictures for Email on Windows Vista:

1. Open “My Computer” and go the folder containing the pictures you want to email.
2. Select the group of files that you wish to email. You can use Shift or Ctrl to select additional files.
3. If the pictures you want to send are already inside your “Pictures” folder, you should see an “Email” button at the top of the Window. Click on the “Email” button. If you do not have an “Email” button you can right click and choose Send To – Mail Recipient.
7. When the “Attach Files” window opens pick a size for your pictures. The small option is suitable for most purposes and will give you the best reduction in file size. If you know your recipient has a fast Internet connection you may want to choose Medium or Large.
8. Click on “Attach”.
9. A status bar appears as Windows resizes the files. Most images will be converted to JPEGs for best compatibility. Some file types cannot be converted automatically. For instance PSD files. These types of files you will have to convert manually to JPEG before funning the email pictures wizard.
10. Once the resizing process is over a new message is opened in your default mail program with your pictures attached.
11. Windows inserts the file names into the subject field of the message. You can change this to suit your needs.
12. Fill in the recipients email address and add a personal message if you wish.
13. That’s it. Go ahead and send the email.

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