Page #192 (Chapter 20. Sharing Images)

155. About Emailing

See Also

156 Set Up Photoshop Elements for Emailing

157 Manage Contacts

158 Share Images Using Email

In all likelihood, you have an electronic mail program on your computer. If yours is a Windows system, your email program is probably one of the two supplied by Microsoft. Outlook, part of Microsoft Office, is an email and contact manager designed for networked, corporate use. Outlook Express, supplied with Internet Explorer, is a less bulky counter-part intended for personal use.

KEY TERM

Email client A program that sends and receives email. Popular email clients/programs include Outlook and Outlook Express.

Photoshop Elements works with the two Microsoft email applications plus Adobe's own email service (available through www.adobe.com). If you use an independent program such as Eudora or AOL Mail, it won't work directly, but you can still use Photoshop Elements to prepare your images for sending. Assuming that your particular email program is Outlook, Outlook Express, or Adobe E-Mail Service, it works with Photoshop Elements in the role of an email client, bridging the gap between Photoshop Elements and your email delivery system. When you want to email a few pictures, the Organizer manages the first steps of processing and preparing the photos for sending, collecting them, identifying them as email attachments, and even packaging them in a nice formatted email message with a fancy background if you like. It then hands off the process of emailing to your email program. Photoshop Elements is programmed to determine how to attach any photo item to an email client; the client then generates an email message with the photos included.

TIP

If, for some reason, you find that your email program doesn't work well with Photoshop Elements, you can still attach your pictures manually to the email message, using the instructions provided for your program.

Whether you initiate the process of sending an open image from within the Editor or you select one from the Organizer catalog, it is the Organizer that does the work. The Organizer, luckily, is designed specifically to make this process fairly simple, first by keeping your pictures organized in its catalog. (See 24 About Organizing Items.) After marking photos with tags and collection markers, you can quickly display related photos in the catalog and initiate the email process. If you initiated the email process from within the Editor, or if you simply forgot to select all the photos you wanted to send, you can also select images from within the Attach Selected Items to Email dialog box, again using the tag and collection markers with which you organized them, to help you locate them for emailing.

NOTE

Some email programs transmit only text. If so, Photoshop Elements might not be able to embed pictures in email messages using its fancy collection of layouts and formats. It will, however, create email attachments and prompt you to attach the files manually to a text message.

You also use this dialog box to select who you want to send images to, and how compressed you want the photos to be. If you increase the quality, you lower the compression, making the files larger and a bit more difficult to send and receive. It's best to choose a happy medianslightly smaller files with acceptable quality. The Organizer can help you keep track of recipient's email addresses using its contact book, or you can skip the process of selecting recipients in the dialog box and use your email client's address book after the email message is packaged by the Organizer. See 157 Manage Contacts. Your final decision in this dialog box has to do with formatyou can embed photos in a designer message, attach them to a plain-vanilla message, or convert them to a PDF slideshow for viewing on a computer.

You can send more than just photos from the Organizer. You can also send a creation, but just one at a time, please. Note that you cannot send photos at the same time you're sending a creation. You can, however, send photos, video files, and audio files in one message if you like. The Attach Selected Items to E-mail dialog box looks a bit different depending on the items you're sending, but the process is remarkably similar. It's described in 158 Share Images Using Email.

Use this dialog box to prepare the items you want to send using your email client.