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Big photos overwhelm e-mail
(News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Apr. 26--Q: I was trying to e-mail some digital pictures I have in iPhoto, but the pictures look so big onscreen that you see only a part of the picture at one time. I didn't want to send them so large. How can I make my photos smaller for e-mail?
R.A.B., Raleigh
A: You probably have a digital camera that takes photos containing a lot of pixels, or picture elements, which are the tiny squares that make up a picture. Digital pictures are typically made up of millions of pixels so that they will look smooth and continuous, rather than blocky like a tile mosaic.
Photos composed of many millions of pixels will make for high-quality prints, even when printed large. However, a high pixel-count is overkill for most photo-sharing by e-mail.
From within iPhoto, Apple's photo organizing and editing software, you can check the size of your photos. Select the photo, click the "Photo" menu and choose "Get Info." Here you will see the size of your photo, including how many pixels and how much disk space it uses.
For example, a photo I took with my digital camera is 2,592 x 1,944 pixels (or about 5 megapixels) and takes up 1.3 MB of space. When I attach this photo to e-mail, it displays on my monitor as a huge image.
If your e-mail recipients are just going to view your photos on their computers, you should resize your photos. Your recipients won't have to scroll much to see your pictures, and their in-boxes won't get filled up with your large attachments.
Using iPhoto, you can resize your photos in at least two ways. In iPhoto, select a photo you want to e-mail. Then click the e-mail icon that looks like a postage stamp. A box will pop up, asking you whether you want the photo to be small, medium or large. Choose a size -- medium is good -- and then you can send the photo using the Apple Mail program.
Another option is to export the photo out of iPhoto and attach it to your e-mail in whatever program you use. Select the image, click the "Share" menu and choose "Export." In the window that appears, you can alter the image size. Click the checkbox next to "Scale images no larger than" and enter smaller dimensions, such as 640 x 480 pixels. Click Export and enter a file name and destination for this exported file.
Q: I get so much spam at my N.C. State University e-mail account. Why doesn't NCSU filter spam? What can I do to reduce the time I spend dealing with spam?
R.C., Raleigh
A: Rather than deleting messages that may or may not be spam, NCSU offers its e-mail users a way to separate what is probably spam from legitimate e-mail and to delete the spam later, if and when they wish.
The university uses spam and virus identification software by Sophos PureMessage to check e-mail sent to NCSU accounts. Using its updated definition lists, PureMessage adds a tag to e-mail that it suspects is spam or a virus.
NCSU e-mail users can set their e-mail programs, such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora Light, to automatically filter out all messages that have the spam tag and place them in a separate spam folder. Users can check the spam folder from time to time and empty it when they are confident it contains no legitimate messages.
By the end of this semester, new NCSU e-mail accounts will be automatically set up to filter and move spam to a separate folder.
For more information on NCSU's use of PureMessage and how to set up specific e-mail programs to filter using PureMessage tags, visit www.ncsu.edu and use the search function at the top right of the page to search for PureMessage. Choose the article titled "PureMessage@NCSU" in the search results.
NCSU offers good tips on avoiding spam. For a list of strategies, see www.ncsu.edu/it/essentials/email_messaging/ minimizing_spam.html.
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