topic Re: Email & photograph in Tech Help - Software/Hardware etc

Email & photograph

gleneagles — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 18:45:22 GMT

I want to send a photograph in the main body of an email, is it simply a matter of copying & pasting it into the email.
I do not want to send it as an attachment.
It would be in jpeg format but what is the recommended size for a decent photograph, I have the necessary software to alter the size.
I would be using Linux & firefox and it would be going to a hotmail address.
Thanks

Re: Email & photograph

IanSn — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 00:13:36 GMT

Surprised no-one has picked this up.
As a rough, anything between 300 to 600 pixels? (Less or more height/width as required.)
Smaller is a bit difficult to see, larger means a greater file size.
Depends what you want to do with it at the other end. I presume just view on screen as you don't want to attach. You could make it bigger. If it looks alright at your end it'll probably look ok at the other end!
If its picked up on a mobile it should resize if necessary.

Re: Email & photograph

Waldo — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 05:42:29 GMT

I'd guess any mail client / webmail service that allows composing email in HTML format would let you insert an image in the body of the email.

Re: Email & photograph

HairyMcbiker — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 08:51:14 GMT

Check what size limits are on the receiving end, used to be a limit of 2mb but that was many years ago. Resize the pic to 800x600 or why to get the size down, since you are using FF I assume it will be sent via web mail? If so no idea probably just drop it on.
I use Thunderbird for email only.

Re: Email & photograph

gleneagles — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 11:14:33 GMT

Thanks for the replies.

Re: Email & photograph

VileReynard — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 15:55:18 GMT

I just take the existing photograph and take 50% of the dimensions, locked to maintain aspect ratio.
This gives a photo of about 25% (in bytes) of the original.
Very easy to do with GIMP.

Re: Email & photograph

gleneagles — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 18:53:32 GMT

All my photos are in Canon RAW format so they are fairly big, a bit of processing may make them even bigger and whilst converting to jpeg will reduce the size a further reduction to 25% might still leave them fairly large.

Re: Email & photograph

IanSn — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 19:19:07 GMT

in GIMP (or whatever you use) you can convert size by pixel or percent.
Convert by pixels to whatever size you need to fit on the screen. Keep ratio same tho! There's a button for that. Save as JPG.
Whatever happens the file size wont be too large.

Re: Email & photograph

HairyMcbiker — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 08:35:44 GMT

If they are in raw then you would have to convert them to jpg/png anyway as no email client will display raw images.

Re: Email & photograph

gleneagles — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 13:15:54 GMT

No way would copy and paste work when trying to get a photo direct into a e mail.
What did work was the following tip I picked up on the internet
Open the photograph (jpeg) in firefox then hit the print screen key go into gmail and the paste instruction works.

Re: Email & photograph

IanSn — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 20:13:44 GMT

Are you using webmail or an email client?
On Thunderbird you can drag and drop an actual file from the desktop into the 'write/compose' window. (You might have to make sure you've got the message as HTML first.)
I'm curious, initially, where did you copy from? Was it an open file in GIMP (or some other image viewer)? Did you make a selection/copy the image?

Re: Email & photograph

gleneagles — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 23:06:22 GMT

Opened the RAW file in photoshop, made a few minor adjustments and then resized it.
Saved to an external hard disk, rebooted into Linux, transferred the photo to the desktop, opened firefox, used the viewer in Linux, hit the print screen key, opened Gmail and then pasted the photo into the email.
I understand there are much quicker ways to do this if you just use Windows but I never use it to access the internet.

Re: Email & photograph

IanSn — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 00:07:05 GMT

Ah, I see.
Didn't quite get what you were trying to do.
I never use webmail, so I didn't know how you might go about it in that case!
Doesn't 'print screen' grab the whole screen, tho? That would be a very large image?

Re: Email & photograph

VileReynard — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 01:45:28 GMT

Quote from: gleneagles
Opened the RAW file in photoshop, made a few minor adjustments and then resized it.
Saved to an external hard disk, rebooted into Linux, transferred the photo to the desktop, opened firefox, used the viewer in Linux, hit the print screen key, opened Gmail and then pasted the photo into the email.
I understand there are much quicker ways to do this if you just use Windows but I never use it to access the internet.

Why not do it all in Linux - no need to mess around in Windows - and no need to send inferior screen shots.

Re: Email & photograph

IanSn — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 07:50:19 GMT

Quote
Why not do it all in Linux - no need to mess around in Windows

Probably using Photoshop in Windows.

Re: Email & photograph

gleneagles — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 11:55:43 GMT

Correct.
There may be a way to use photoshop in Linux using wine but by the time you have messed about with that it's easier in my case to do what I outlined above.
I am sure it's possible to access certain files saved in Windows whilst using Linux thus omitting the need to save the file to a hard drive and then bring it back into Linux but I am not sure how to do that.
This exercise is a one off thing so it's unlikely I will need to do it again.
If you were just using windows and you have Word there is some way of using that program to save the photograph so it can be pasted direct into the main body of a email, there are a few posts on the internet that cover it.
Thanks again for the helpful replies.

Re: Email & photograph

DebbieLawson196 — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 18:17:53 GMT

Use GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) that runs on Win and Linux. It's a bit scary when you first run it but does most of the stuff you'll need (comparing it to PhotoShop is a bit like the comparison of LibreOffice to MS Office).
Emailing photos from a linux command line is realatively easy with python

import time
from datetime import datetime
import smtplib
from email.mime.image import MIMEImage
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
f_time = datetime.now().strftime('%a %d %b @ %H:%M')
toaddr = 'mygmailaddres@gmail.com'    # redacted
me = 'myplusnetid@mydynamicIP.plus.net' # redacted
subject = 'Photo ' + f_time
msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['Subject'] = subject
msg['From'] = me
msg['To'] = toaddr
msg.preamble = "Photo @ " + f_time
fp = open('photo.jpg', 'rb')
img = MIMEImage(fp.read())
fp.close()
msg.attach(img)
try:
   s = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
   s.send_message(msg)
   s.quit()
except:
   print ("Error: unable to send email")

Re: Email & photograph

gleneagles — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 18:51:21 GMT

Might look easy to you but it certainly does not look easy to me.

Re: Email & photograph

VileReynard — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 19:21:03 GMT

It would be easy to turn it into a script.
You could then just type one line with a few parameters such as destination etc.

Re: Email & photograph

Waldo — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 22:28:30 GMT

Quote from: gleneagles
[...]
transferred the photo to the desktop, opened firefox, used the viewer in Linux, hit the print screen key, opened Gmail and then pasted the photo into the email.
I understand there are much quicker ways to do this if you just use Windows but I never use it to access the internet.

Much simpler (and OS agnostic as befits a web service) I'd have thought, to use Gmail's drag and drop (upload) feature.