E-mailing a digital photo sounds so simple. After all, few tasks are more elementary in this high-tech world than sending an e-mail. But e-mail can still confound.
Size Is the Problem
If you ever have difficulty e-mailing images, the crux of the problem is almost always the size of the image files that you've attached. When I talk about size in this context, I don't mean the number of megapixels or the dimensions of the image. I mean the file size, usually measured in kilobytes or megabytes, which is how much space it takes to store the image.
Here's why file size matters: Most e-mail services support messages of up to a certain size, like 2MB or 5MB. If you send a message that's larger than the upper limit, then the message will be rejected by the server (resulting in an error message in your e-mail program) or will arrive at the recipient's PC looking like digital spaghetti, extruded into alphanumeric gobbledygook in the e-mail message.
Even if the message makes it all the way through--thanks to a very generous file size limit at your ISP--the results may not be pretty. If you send a huge 5MB image to someone with a dial-up connection to the Internet, it can take them an hour or more to receive your message, tying up the phone line the whole time. Your recipient won't be pleased.
