Mail: any way to resize photos before attaching/inserting?

argeliusargelius
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
One feature I liked in Outlook/Entourage is the ability to resize a photo before attaching it to an email.



I know I can do that if I first go to iPhoto and select a picture, then click on the 'email' icon.



Just curious if there is anyway to do the same thing from within Mail.



Thanks.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 10
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Argelius

    One feature I liked in Outlook/Entourage is the ability to resize a photo before attaching it to an email.



    I know I can do that if I first go to iPhoto and select a picture, then click on the 'email' icon.



    Just curious if there is anyway to do the same thing from within Mail.



    Thanks.



    I just put together an Automator action that works pretty well. You have to specify the percentage resize ahead of time though.
  • Reply 2 of 10
    argeliusargelius Posts: 309member
    I'm a total Automator novice. How did you do that? When I click on the mail application in Automator, I don't see any available actions that have anything to do with inserting photos...
  • Reply 3 of 10
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Argelius

    I'm a total Automator novice. How did you do that? When I click on the mail application in Automator, I don't see any available actions that have anything to do with inserting photos...



    After three days with no reply, I swear, just five minutes ago I trashed it. Dang dang dang. It was only 3 steps so let me see if I can redo it.
  • Reply 4 of 10
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    OK I found it: I uploaded it to Here (you may have to control-click and choose download linked file)



    Here is a screenshot in case the file doesn't work:



    Screenshot



    Try it and then we can figure out how to access it via right-click from Mail.



    EDIT: Basically, first it uses the Mail action to Open a New Mail Message. Then it uses the Finder to let you choose the photos you want (you said they were not in iPhoto; if so we can change that). Next it copies the Finder items so that the originals are preserved before the resize. Then it uses the Scale Images action from Preview.app to scale to 50% (you can change this, or we can try and find a way for the action to stop and let you change it on the fly). Finally it uses the Add Attachments To Front Message from Mail to attach the scaled images to the new message we created in step 1.
  • Reply 5 of 10
    vandewaalsvandewaals Posts: 450member
    Or.....you can use Mail.app.



    When you have a message open, attach a picture. In the status bar at the bottom of the message window there will appear a drop-down menu that will allow you to compress and shrink the image if needed to facilitate the transfer.



    No muss, no fuss
  • Reply 6 of 10
    argeliusargelius Posts: 309member
    Hey!



    You are the best!



    No time just now to play with it, but will do so tomorrow.



    Can't wait.



  • Reply 7 of 10
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by VanDeWaals

    Or.....you can use Mail.app.



    When you have a message open, attach a picture. In the status bar at the bottom of the message window there will appear a drop-down menu that will allow you to compress and shrink the image if needed to facilitate the transfer.



    No muss, no fuss



    damn apple's brilliance. taking the fun all out of playing with automator
  • Reply 8 of 10
    vandewaalsvandewaals Posts: 450member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman

    damn apple's brilliance. taking the fun all out of playing with automator



    Yeah...I was toying with the idea of keeping quiet and letting you guys try and figure it out....sorry to rain on your geekfest



    I haven't even attempted to use Automator as of yet....some day soon I'm gonna sit down and see what I can do with it.
  • Reply 9 of 10
    argeliusargelius Posts: 309member
    Well Jeez..I must have seen that particular screen (email with picture inserted) and never saw the option to resize there. That's exactly what I was looking for. Sorry to have started a thread due to mere stupidity...



    \



    PS Here's another question. If I am in Mail and click on "attachment" and navigate to my Pictures folder, is there any way to be able to view thumbnails of all of the pictures in a given folder all at once? It's hard to find a particular picture if you don't know its name and can only see a thumbnail one-at-a-time in the third Finder pane.
  • Reply 10 of 10
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Not really, but you could instead use the Finder to navigate to that folder, hit Icon view (with previews on), see the pretty pretty pictures, grab the one you want and drop it on the Mail Dock icon. This will create a new message with the file as an attachment. Then resize in Mail if necessary.



    Or, if you already have a mail message drafted you want to add to, just drop it on that window, of course. I never use the Attach... menu item.
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