A friend loaded pics from her Fuji digital camera on her computer & is e-mailing them to me via Yahoo Mail. It is taking forever for her to attach each pic to an e-mail. While it theoretically will allow multiple attachments per e-mail, it takes even longer than forever and I get these huge files containing one or two pics. How can she condense these so they move faster through the system?
Do you need them full size/quality or do you just want to see them?
If you don’t need full quality pics she can just resize them.
The quickest way is to run the photos through imaging software (either what came with the camera, what’s on the computer, or any number of good 3rd party software) and resize the images to 1024x800 or something similar. Save those images and mail them instead.
You can compress image data, but it’s not going to save you massive amount of space, as JPGs already do compression.
If you just want to view them, have her do a screen capture of each one and send that. A screen capture will automatically change them to (about) 72 ppi.
Otherwise Photoshop or GIMP (free).
ETA: There should be a setting on her camera that will allow her to take lower res pics.
“Pixels per inch” is fairly meaningless for a raster image stored on a computer – what matters is the absolute number of pixels. If you open, for example, a 1000x1000 pixel image and take a screen capture of it, the result will still be 1000x1000 pixels.
The only way you’d get a smaller image is if you displayed it “zoomed out” before taking the capture – and that’s just a roundabout way of resizing an image in a program like GIMP. 
If you have a PC with Paint, open the files with it, and select Image and then Stretch/skew. I usually set both axes at 25%, and that shrinks them nicely
Gimp works, too, but Paint is a lot quicker. Gimp is a memory/processor hog.
Unless all you’re going to do is email the photos around, don’t do this. IMO, it’s always preferable to take the pictures at maximum resolution and then crop and/or resize on the computer. Disk space is cheap.
before attaching the pics to email, re-size them. See the link below.
To use it, you just right-click on the pic’s name, choose small, medium or large size, and the pic makes a copy of itself, with the same name,and the word “Small” added. (or medium, or large). The re-sized photo still looks great on the computer screen, and is much, much smaller and faster to send by email. This works fine if you want to see the pics on the screen, it’s not quite as good if you want to print them permanently, since you lose the fine resolution)
go to
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
halfway down the page, click on “image resizer .exe” on the right hand side of the screen.
Download the program, install it and it will become a permanent part of Windows, always available, just by right-clicking on any photo.
Use XNview to resize images. It’s one of the best free image manipulators. I’ve never had anything I that I needed that I couldn’t do with XNview.
Use a card reader = faster to download + no need to hook up the camera.
Use the batch function on irfanview= fast + cheap ( free ) + small foot print.
Up load to free host site like Picasa and share links.
My camera with 6 M-Pixels will take pictures around 2848 X 2136 pixels and 2911 KB
Using irfanview to resize & resample to a 800 X 600 using 90% quality I get 282 KB ( It is a busy photo of lots of foliage. )
Seems plenty big nuff for the screen and viewing pleasure of friends and family on less than new & huge monitors…
Also FTP uploading to a site is almost always faster than email uploading.
YMMV
If using win 7 right click then choose send to mail recipient,
A resize window will pop up.
Easy as peas. I can’t remember if this feature is in XP.
Just came in to recommend this. Top notch image viewing/editing program.
Well, she went ahead & sent them & it didn’t take as long as expected. She must have had a slow connection earlier. Thanks!
Whatever she does to “resize” them, make sure each image is saved in a name different than the original. Otherwise, the image will be degraded and there is no going back.
That’s why a decent graphics program is crucial. Original images should never be manipulated. You always make a copy (preferably in the graphics program’s native format) and manipulate the copy.