How to make a photo small enough to email

Modern phone photos are large, and a handful of them will exceed most attachment limits. Shrinking them first is quicker than any workaround.

Compress images
Whichever tool you use here, the file stays on your device. How that works

Step by step

  1. 1Add the photos you want to send.
  2. 2Set the maximum width to 1600 pixels.
  3. 3Set quality around 80 per cent and check the resulting total.
  4. 4If you are still over the limit, send fewer photos per message rather than crushing them further.

The limit is smaller than it looks

Attachments are encoded for transport, which makes them roughly a third larger in transit than they are on disk. A twenty four megabyte set of photos can be refused by a twenty five megabyte limit for that reason alone, so leave yourself real headroom.

Width is the lever that matters. Dropping a 4000 pixel photo to 1600 pixels removes most of the file size while still looking sharp on any screen the recipient is likely to use.

If the recipient needs the full resolution originals, say for printing, do not compress them. Send fewer at a time, or use a file transfer service and accept that this means uploading them somewhere.

Questions

How small should each photo be?

Under about two megabytes each is comfortable, and several of those still fit within a typical limit.

Will the recipient notice?

On a screen, almost certainly not. In print at a large size, possibly.

Are the photos uploaded to shrink them?

No.