156. Set Up Photoshop Elements for Emailing Before You Begin  155 About Emailing
See Also  69 Print an Image Using an Online Service
157 Manage Contacts 158 Share Images Using Email 160 Share Images Using an Online Service
Whether you initiate emailing from within the Editor or the Organizer, it's the Organizer that actually packages your items in an email message and passes that off to your email client. Before the Organizer can send photos or other items as email, however, it must be able to identify your email client. Accordingly, the first step in emailing photos is to set up the Organizer so that it makes the right connection with the right email program. At the same time you tell the Organizer which email client to use, you can set your default email preferences, such as the amount of file compression. File compression is a method that mathematically makes a file smaller. Because data is often removed during file compression, the setting you choose directly affects the quality of the photos you send. Any selection you make during this setup process, however, can be overridden during the sending process if you decide you don't mind sending a larger image to make sure that it arrives looking good.  1. | Open the Preferences Dialog Box
NOTE  | The amount of compression you set here, or later on during the email process, is used to make your images smaller so that they can be sent faster. The actual image files on your hard disk are not affected in any way, so you're in no danger of losing the quality of your saved images no matter which setting you chose. The only factor here is the quality at the receiving end, balanced against how long it might take for your intended recipient to down-load the image file. |
From the Organizer main menu, select Edit, Preferences, E-mail. The Preferences dialog box opens with the E-mail page selected.
You also can open this dialog box from the Editor by selecting Edit, Preferences, Organize & Share. When the dialog box opens, select E-mail from the list in the left pane.
| 2. | Select a Client
Open the E-mail Client drop-down list. It displays the email clients currently available on your system. Select the client you want to use.
If you choose Adobe E-mail Service, in the Your Name text box, enter your name as you want it to appear in your email messages. Enter your E-mail Address as well.
If your email client is not listed here, it is not compatible with Photoshop Elements. In that case, select the Save to Hard Disk and Attach Files Yourself option. As the label suggests, when you send items in an email, they are actually compressed and saved in the folder you choose by clicking the Browse button. You can then use your email program to originate a message manually and attach the saved files.
TIPS  | The Setting you choose for email preferences defines the maximum file size the Organizer will prepare uncompressed for email transmission. If your item is larger than the maximum, the Organizer prepares a copy and compresses it enough so that it doesn't go over the maximum file size. Your original remains intact, of course. When resaving your edited PSD image files in a sharable format, try to select a low-enough compression that your picture files are as small as you can make them without losing quality. When you try to send a large file, the best-case scenario is that it takes a long time, perhaps longer than the recipient is willing to tolerate. The worst-case scenario is that any of the multiple links in the email system could reject the file as too large to handle. This is particularly likely with the high levels of Internet security now in effect. |
| 3. | Select a Default File Size
In the Settings pane, open the Presets For list and select a compression size preset, such as Medium. You can also leave this option set at Leave as Is, which means that your items are never compressed before sending.
After choosing a compression size, you can adjust its associated Maximum Photo Size and Quality. These default settings will be used next time you send items using email, unless you change them for an individual transmission.
You can also change the settings for the other options in the Presets For drop-down list by choosing them one at a time and making adjustments. Just be sure to go back and choose the preset you want to use most often so that it will be the default the next time you send items. Make your selections and click OK. You're now ready to send some email. See 158 Share Images Using Email.
At 72 pixels per inch (a standard setting for computer screen viewing), the Small size produces a picture about 4" x 3". That is often large enough for ordinary snapshots. A Medium picture is twice the size, and a Big setting is twice that size again, more than 14 inches in its longer dimension. A useful approach for many family photographers is to choose the Small setting as a default. If you expect the recipients to print the pictures, you might want greater size or quality. If so, you can manually increase the setting for that particular email message. See 158 Share Images Using Email.
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