Share Your Digital Photos

Digital cameras and camera phones have captured the public eye. Last year consumers bought over 500 million of them. The chances are that you already have one of these handy devices and have amassed a pile of pictures.

Part of the fun of photography is sharing your images with friends and family. Traditionally, people have made prints from their film. With a color printer, you can easily print your digital files at home--no need to spend money for film processing anymore. But with digital photos you have some 21st century options: e-mailing your images or sharing them online.

E-mailing can be quick and simple--all you have to do is download the pictures from your camera to your computer, select the ones you want and attach them to your message. (If you need help with this, see our step-by-step instructions for attaching files.) But before you click the Send button, keep some things in mind

Digital images are typically stored as jpeg files (you'll notice the .jpg file extension at the end of the file name). With today's megapixel cameras, snapping a photo at high resolution can result in an image with a very large file size, sometimes .5 Mb or more. If you plan to print your photos, you want high resolution images, since they provide sharper, clearer prints. But e-mailing high resolution images presents some problems.

Without a broadband connection, it can take a long time to send these huge files. (Also, some e-mail service limit file attachments to a total of 10 Mb.)The same is true for the recipient--downloading large attachments over a slow connection can try anyone's patience. Also, large files may clog the recipient's mailbox or worse, be rejected because it's over the account limit. So what do you do?

If you don't plan on making prints, then shoot at low resolution, say 600 x 800 pixels. Most cameras let you set the image size. An added benefit is that because the images are smaller, you can store more of them in the camera's memory.

Another option is to shoot at high resolution, then reduce the file size of the photos you want to e-mail. You can do this a few different ways. If you use Microsoft Outlook, there's a handy feature that will automatically reduce the size of photo files. After you attach the photos, click on the Attachment Options button, then select the appropriate setting.

If you decide to go this route, remember to make a copy of the original file, then save the copy at the smaller size. Otherwise you will overwrite--and lose forever--your original high resolution file.

Many digital cameras now come with photo editing software that you can install on your computer. For under $80 USD, you can buy programs such as Photoshop Elements and Paint Shop Pro that easily reduce file size, as well as a lot of other useful things. Once you've reduced your masterpieces to a manageable size, just attach and send.