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The efficient way to email your digital photos

by Adam Cochran

I often get emails from family or friends who have recently been on vacation or been involved in some other event and they want to share a handful of photos with everyone in their address book. Some of the email works out great, but other email doesn’t quite make it through the way sender intended.

Emailing photos can be one of the most troublesome things you can do with your email for several reasons.

  1. Non-resized photos can take a long time to upload to send through email on a dialup line.

  2. Non-resized photos can take a long time to download for everyone you send the email to. Nothing is more aggravating than waiting 20 minutes for a photo to download so you can read your email, only to find out that the photo is of a funny position that the cat fell asleep in.

  3. Every email program handles attachments differently and some people on your list may call you for tech support when they can’t get the photos you sent.

There is a much better solution for sending photos via email.

Using the following system there is no limit to the number of photos you send in an email, recipients don’t have to wait for them to download, and the email doesn’t take up any more space on the hard drive than a typical email.

The system I am referring to is the online photo album.

Ofoto, Shutterfly, Club Photo, Fotki, and Yahoo Photos are just a few of the sites where you can upload your photos for public or private viewing. Using these sites you can upload your photos then send everyone on your list a link to the online album. From there, they can view slideshows, order prints or photo gifts, or simply enjoy the photos at their leisure.

Best of all it’s free. Simply go to the website of your choice and setup a free account using a user name, password, email address and very little personal information. The services will offer an ‘upload option’ to get your pictures from your computer to the service. As with emailing photos, if you are on dial-up Internet, be aware that uploading full resolution photos can take some time.