Had any complaints from your friends about the size of the pictures you’ve sent to them?  Does it take a long time to e-mail your images?  Do your friends get a dull image without the vibrancy or punch that you see on your screen?  If so this article will tell you how to avoid these problems by using Photoshop.

1.      First off, to get organized I’d suggest that you make a folder / directory to save the images that you’ve processed for e-mailing.  It doesn’t matter where you create the folder as long as you can find it.  I’d suggest a descriptive name like “e-mail images”.

2.      If you haven’t yet scanned the slide or downloaded your image from your camera, please do so and save it as you usually do with your other scanned images.

3.      Start Photoshop and open up the image you’d like to e-mail.

4.      Make any RAW to PSD conversions as well as any profile or color management settings if your normal workflow includes such steps.

5.      Save this image to the e-mail folder you made in step 1 above.  This way you won’t inadvertently save the final processed file over your original scanned image.

6.      Now using Photoshop,click the menu command Image>Image Size.

a.      Once the image size dialog box is displayed go the last check box at the bottom and uncheck “Resample image ”.

b.      Now check the “Constrain Proportions” check box if it is not grayed out or already checked,

c.      Next enter 6 inches for the longest dimension of your image in either the Width or Height boxes depending on whether your image is a horizontal or a vertical.

d.      You only need to enter one dimension since Photoshop will automatically calculate the other dimension for you because the constrain proportions box is checked.

e.      Now, go back and check the "Resample image" check box.

f.      Next, click on the resolution box and enter 72 (which is the typical computer monitor display resolution).

g.        Finally, click OK and Photoshop will resize your image and throw out a ton of pixels which will make your image a much smaller file compared to your original scan.  Your image may appear rather tiny in the Photoshop window but if you press Ctrl-Alt-zero, your image will display at the same size it will when you e-mail it.

7.      Now use Photoshop’s Image>Mode>Convert Profile command and select the “sRGB IEC61966-2.1” color profile.  This step will convert your current profile to the Web color profile so that colors in the final e-mailed image will be consistent with how they display on your screen.

8.      If you’d like to make any saturation adjustments or color corrections or whatever, perform those operations then flatten the image using the Layers>Flatten command

9.      Next we will compress the image so that it can be e-mailed and received more quickly than if we just sent it as a .PSD or .TIF file.  To do this we will use Photoshop’s Save for Web command under the File command.  Once you bring up the save for web dialog box, follow the instructions below:

a.      Click on the 4 up tab near the top of the window to display 4 versions of your image.  Note that the upper left image is the way the image looks without any file compression.

b.      Now over on the right side of the screen near the top, click on the file type and choose JPEG from the drop down list. (JPEG compression works best for photographic images, GIF compression works better on drawings and cartoons or images with large areas with few colors)

c.      Click in the Quality box and enter 30.

d.      Now compare (look at) the uncompressed image (top left) to the compressed version in the top right.  Also compare the top right image to the images on the bottom row of the 4 up display.  If you’re not happy with the image quality, go back and change the value you entered in c above.

e.      Also notice the file sizes of each respective image by looking in the lower left corner of each image window.  The number with a K after it is the file size in Kilobytes.  If your image is larger than 40K, it will take quiet a while to e-mail unless you have high speed internet access.  By the same token, the recipient will take a long time to download your image unless they have high speed internet access.

f.        Once you’re happy with the quality and file size of your image, click the Save button.

g.      On the next screen, be sure that the compressed file is going to be saved in your “e-mail image” folder then click OK.

You’re all done preparing your images! Now you have a reasonably sized 4x6, compressed image which is saved in the Web based color profile.  All you have to do now is attach the image file to your next e-mail.