A Better Way than E-mailing Photos

Adults over 30 years old did not know digital cameras as children. They would have considered themselves lucky to own a Polaroid. There was that eager anticipation for the color and the picture to develop right before their eyes. That was then. Today, digital cameras are so common that even cellphones have digital cameras. Digital cameras evolved significantly over the years that their latest designs are very user-friendly. Many digital cameras are point-and-shoot models. And, if you are not satisfied with the picture you took, you can just delete and take another shot. The preview function in digital cameras allows you to choose which pictures are worth saving and printing.

 

 

Digital cameras offer not only ease of use, but extremely good quality of photos as well. The quality of pictures snapped with digital cameras approximate those taken by professional photographers. Today’s digital cameras range from under 2 mega pixels to over 6 mega pixels and they are all very affordable. Thus, consumers have now shifted their buying decisions from being strictly price-based to based on other features. The size of a digital camera is equally important to how easy it is to e-mail pictures that have been taken by it.  And, talking of e-mailing pictures, there are a few things to consider.

 

When buying a digital camera, do not concern yourself with e-mail capabilities.  The digital camera itself has no bearing on e-mail capability since most pictures have file sizes of at least 1 megabyte each.  To e-mail a picture this big will seem to take forever, especially if you are still on dial-up.

 

Experts advise the zipping of files before attaching them to e-mails. Unfortunately, this is not practical because the process of zipping more than ten photos at a time can also be slow and frustrating. You may even be annoyed and consider it a waste of time. Besides, a huge zip file can still clog up your e-mail and slow down your entire system.

Moreover, there are other disadvantages to e-mailing photos. One is the difficulty of retrieving photos attached to an e-mail sent several months ago as it could easily be buried under hundreds, if not thousands, of other emails (unless you habitually “save” and are methodical in your files-keeping).

 

Then there is “photo compression” which is basically similar to file zipping. To quote the many advertisements, “Photo compression (technically called zipping) lets you have your cake and eat it too." Your photos are compressed by a zip program, resulting to "squished" copies of your originals. If you intend to print your photos, you can compress them to their original resolution. If you purpose, however, is to simply e-mail the photos to friends or view them on your computer, you can compress them to a reduced resolution. In short, photo compression enables you to cram multiple photos in a single zip file.

 

Then again, there is another and much simpler solution. Do not e-mail your photos. Do not waste your time zipping multiple photos and fumbling with your files. Instead, check out websites that offer photo services and allow you to post pictures at their site for your family and friends to see. Not only will you get away with not having to e-mail any pictures, but these sites provide other services that you just might have need of. You have nothing to lose by checking these sites out and if you like their service, you can post your pictures and share them with your friends and family.