E-mailing your favorite pictures is still a difficult task even today with so many programs that claim to organize your pictures. The reason it is difficult is pretty simple: in order to be able to send pictures by email you have to reduce their size and add them as attachments to the email. This task is somewhat simple if you only want to send one picture. However, if you want to send multiple pictures it gets very tedious and most people just don’t do it. Others send multiple emails containing their huge image files. In Picasa, however, it is very easy to send emails with your favorite pictures if you learn how to set it up.
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Why emailing your favorite pictures is normally difficult
I still get a lot of emails with favorite pictures from family and friends. The pictures being sent are huge…they are larger than my screen. In addition, even with fast internet connection it takes some time to download them. Why? Because people don’t really know how to make image files smaller. In addition the whole process of sending emails with multiple attachments is pretty cumbersome too.
It should be easy…right? You pick your picture, you change the resolution, you save that new picture and then you write an email and attach the picture as an attachment. Sounds reasonable.
But what happens if you have to send 10 photos? It gets very tedious very fast…so it’s a lot easier to send the pictures full resolution. However, if you don’t reduce your image files sizes, most likely this will pass well over 20Mb and most email programs will not allow this large size to be sent. Most importantly, most people do not need the full resolution picture because they will never print pictures from you. Facebook for example reduces your pictures to about 1024px by 760 px which is very very small, but enough for sharing pictures with friends.
An example on reducing image size
I use a Canon T2i for most of my pictures. It has an 18 megapixels sensor which produces pictures 5184×3456 pixels…that’s huge!. Files saved as JPG at the finest resolution, meaning that they use the least compression, are between 6.5Mb and 9Mb in size. Think about sending 10 of these pictures!
However, when I reduce the same pictures to 900x600px to used them for my travel blog the same pictures get reduced to between 140 Kb and 380Kb in size. So I’m reducing my image files about 50 times. So, 10 of these images would be at most 4Mb combined. Not a problem!
I know this example is a little drastic but most of the times you would not have to send pictures larger than 1600 pixels wide which will reduce the file size to less than 1Mb. This is a lot easier to send as attachments.
In addition, the process of putting together an email is very cumbersome in most software packages. It would be very cool to have a program reduce your image sizes and create the email with all the images as attachments. Well, that’s exactly what Picasa does for you!
Picasa, makes the whole process of sending your favorite photos by email very, very simple.
Set up your Picasa options for automated email settings
It might look like there are a few options on the E-mail tab of the Picasa Options but essentially you have to make two choices.
Set your e-mail options on the Picasa Options E-mail tab
Choose your email program
You have essentially two options: Outlook and Gmail. It is not surprising that Picasa doesn’t support Yahoo or Hotmail…why should they since Google makes Picasa?
Set your resolution
Make sure you don’t send pictures with the original size unless you really need to.
You can set the maximum resolution for the pictures you send by moving the slider. You can only use Picasa’s set resolutions. If you want a different resolution you need to export your pictures and set a different resolution when you export.
Select your pictures and click e-mail
In Picasa it’s simple: just select your favorite pictures (hold CTRL and click to select multiple pictures) and click the e-mail button at the bottom of the screen. Picasa will assemble your email according to your settings on the Options screen. It even puts some text in the email so you only have to type your addressee’s e-mail address.
E-mail message with multiple favorite pictures created by Picasa.
I have multiple Gmail accounts and Picasa even allows me to change which account to use. As you can see the email is ready to send…you only need to add email addresses in the “To” field and click the Send button.
Picasa will do everything for you…change the resolution of the pictures to the resolution specified in Options, attach them to the email and write a simple email message for you.
Conclusion about sending emails with Picasa
I have not seen any other programs that makes sending your favorite pictures by email this easy. It definitely shows that Google engineers have been paying attention to every step in the process. Using Picasa to send your pictures by email is really easy. I love it!
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My problem is my address (contacts) have disappeared from my Picasa gmail and when I try and
put in the address by manual, it says error …… try later I have tried to just put in the first one or two letters of the email address I want to send to and my auto email addresses don’t come up.
This is driving me nuts. I need to send photos to family out of state, and this is something I had
happen one other time, and don’t remember how I got them back. Can you please guide me
through the steps to get this to work again. Thanks so much. pennejohnson@gmail.com
Penne…you contacts are in your Google account. Make sure you are signed into Picasa with your Google account. You should see it on the top right of Picasa when you are logged in. If you still don’t see them, go to your Gmail and click on contacts…make sure you see then OK.
I used to send pictures easily with Picasa…, now after many tries I opened a new account and the pictures still do not send…..I get the message “Error HTTP Error 0-[12]” and to try again later………….which I did but still cannot send……WHY?
I have been a Picasa user from day one then google took it and screwed it up so bad now I am looking for a better system
Mike…Google actually improved it quite a bit, but then they stopped developing it and now it is getting behind. I have been using Lightroom for a good while now which is great especially of shooting RAW photos…but it has its own quirks. Another cheaper option would be ACDSee.
I opened a Google account, – tried to email a photo in Picasa – got a message “this account is not enabled for Google photos – would you like to open a web page that may help resolve this problem- YES NO. No I do not. What now?
Mary…make sure you are logged into your Google account in Picasa…it is in the upper right corner. Then it should work when you click on the email button on the bottom. I just tried it and it works. However, with Picasa being discontinued I expect that the interaction with Google services will stop working at some point.
It won’t send pics anymore. An error notice comes up and says try again later. I used to always be able to send….
Doris…yes…while Picasa still runs…anything that Picasa used to be able to connect in the Google ecosystem has been slowly turned off. They really want people to stop using it and use Google Photos instead.
Is there a fee for opening a Google account in order to email photos in Picasa? In the past I simply had to identify pictures in Picasa, click email and follow a few instructions in the email window & ‘presto’ the selected pictures were sent. Now I get a pop-up to open a Google account.
Mary…you can open a Google account for free. And it comes with 15 gb space in Google Drive as well. Just go to accounts.google.com
I have selected several pictures in Picasa and attached only those to an email. When I send them as email attachments, the five photos are attached, and the recipient can open them. However, they have also have access to View All Photos, which I do not want. How can I prevent this?
Cheryl..Picasa works with Google Photos and you have to set permissions on all the other photos to private in Google Photos. Best way is to place photos in albums in Google Photos and then only share the albums you want.
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My Question is about sending photos to a newspaper for print publication. I am a writer who occasionally will send a piece to my city newspaper for publication. They always want me to include a photo, but they complain that what I am emailing them is too small. So I’m guessing my yahoo email is compressing the photo? I’m a writer not a techie… Appreciate any help. Thx
Kathy…I do not see any changes made by yahoo mail to my pictures. You can try this: go to the folder that contains the image file. Right-click on the image file and choose properties and look k at the file size…should be over 1.5 Mb. If not it is already small and you have to check your camera. If not, the email shrinks the photo.
Vlad – I should have mentioned that I am not a Picasa user. I got to your site as I was searching for a program that might solve my problem. My file size is always over 1.5 MB, so I think it may be Yahoo compressing the file. Do you think Picasa would help? Or do I open an Outlook email account too?
Thx
Kathy…You can verify if yahoo mail is doing anything to your picture by using another her email provider like outlook and sending the picture as attachment. Check the file size before sending it and then check it when receiving it in the new account. Picasa would not help you.
Can Picasa emailed photo and message be tracked/saved to retrieve by sender?
The person I sent it to did not receive it…want to find and resend
Jane…depending how you have sent it. If you have used your GMail account to send, it should be in your Sent folder. If you have used Outlook on your local computer (instead of the online Outlook), the message should also be in your Sent folder. It’s not Picasa that keeps track…it’s your email program that keeps track. Hope this helps.
I am very frustrated still in the ability to send a high resolution image via email. I seem to learn when people set down directions like they would if I am getting directions to get somewhere. Step 1. Step 2. Step 3. etc… Turn Left at, turn Right at, etc…
When I try to send by email a notice comes up ” there is no email program associated to perform the requested action > Please install an email program. If one is already installed create an association in the Default control panel” I have no idea what this means. I upgraded to Windows 10 and had other problems ie printing out photos but that has been resolved. this never used to be a problem before
Barbara… I his message means that you do not have a classic email program installed on your computer…something like outlook or thunderbird. If you use webmail like Yahoo! It will not work. If you use gmail instead it works great!
What versions of Picasa offer the link to send a bunch of pictures (wedding, etc)? My wonderful, easy to use version got updated by an idiot and the version I have now doesn’t have it )-:
Jeri-Anne…You should get the latest version of Picasa which is version 3.9.
When I put text on a photo and then email it, the picture is transferred but the text on the photo does not transfer with the space is blank. What do I do?
Randall…First, I’m not really sure how you add text on the photo…with Picasa or on your cell phone?
My quick answer is that you need to export the photo with the text on it first. This will create a new copy of the photo with the text on it. That’s the photo you want to transfer.
I love Picasa’s picture emailing feature, the only issue is that you cannot use Hotmail or Yahoo to send pictures, I wish there was a way to add them.
Alex…I like this feature as well but it will only work with Gmail or a local installation of Outlook. Picasa was made by Google so they didn’t care to integrate with Yahoo.
Frustrated. . When people get the pics I send with Picasa and they go to print them out they are blurry because they end up sending out a small size instead of the original and I have every thing set to large size. One pic is fine but more than that it messes then all up. I usually try to send a lot at a time. Someone now informed me they can’t print them because they are blurry. Looks fine on my screen but not when printed.
DeeAnn…good question. First off, you can send originals with the settings I have in this article. Even compressed with the maximum size will be fine (1600px) for the screen…for normal pictures. I have not had any problems with emailing multiple pictures with Picasa.
The problem might be with the original being blurry or with the camera resolution being set to very small.
The basic rule for printing is that a commercial printer prints at 300 DPI…so a 4×6 photo needs a minimum resolution of 1200×1800 to get a good print. Anything smaller will result in loss of quality.
when I email my picassa pictures, the comments I have added to my pictures do not show up in the sent email. How do I rectify this?
Allison…not really sure which comments you are referring to. Are they the photo captions you entered in Picasa, or the comments you have written in the body of the email you sent via Picasa?
I used to be able to choose from my list of e mail contacts..hit “a” and all my a’s would show up and I could choose. Now for some reason I cann’t get my list, I have to go to me e mail..copy them and then type it in. ??????? why?
Good question! I just tried it and it works as you expect it to work. I have Picasa 3.9…the latest version, maybe you have an older version…not sure. Here are a few things to check:
Make sure you are signed into your Google Account in Picasa on the top right corner of Picasa. However, if you are not signed in you wouldn’t be able to see the email display.
Make sure you click in the To: box. Then when you hit “a” you should see all your a’s…I do.
All this to say that I’m not sure what is going on…in my version of Picasa it is working as expected…I click in the To box then type “a” and all my a’s are showing in a list and I can pick which ones I want.
Problem has been fixed by Google in Picasa 3.9 build 136.20! Make sure you update!!
Oddly enough, I have updated my Picasa to the latest version about a month ago, shortly after the first comment and I started seeing the same problem reported.
When I composed an email I couldn’t simply type part of the recipient name anymore…nothing came up. So I believe Google has introduced a bug in their latest version of Picasa. I was hoping they would fix it fast.
And they did…between March 26 and April 2nd they fixed all the auto-complete issues they introduced. That’s fast.
Now everything is working as advertised!