Embedding an image into Email without increasing the size to MBs

Question

If I paste an image from PDF or Powerpoint, as an embedded object to appear in an email (eg, an invitation) - it blows the size out to 2MB etc. How do I paste it so the picture is of good quality but not 2MB etc.

If I paste special and select Metafile or Bitmap the image becomes slightly blury and isn't good enough to send to clients.

I want people to open the email and the invitation is right there (no files to open etc).

Answer 1

Outlook 2007 should do some image compression by default but you can improve on this by saving your screen grab as a file and inserting it ('Insert > Picture') rather than just pasting it into the email.

If the image is a photograph, try saving it as a JPEG with decent compression (say the 60% quality setting) and inserting that. On a test image, that brought the file size down to 100K from over 900K for the pasted image. For graphics or text, try saving as a 256 colour PNG file.

The free version of FastStone Capture will let you make screen grabs and save to file.

Answer 2

What I do first of all is save the picture in a compressed format such as JPEG. Then (on Windows XP) I open the file with Microsoft Office Picture Manager. (Right click on the file and select Open With.) From the Picture menu select Compress Pictures..., then choose the compression setting that gives you the desired tradeoff between file size and picture resolution.

How you get the resulting file into your e-mail message depends on your mail client.

Answer 3

For issues like yours, I take the image out to Irfanview as a JPEG. then I size/crop it as needed to get to the pixels by pixels size I want. Lastly, Irfanview has a plugin, RIOT (Radical Image Optimization Tool, I believe that stands for) which I use next and set the output size to something reasonable. Usually works for me.

/s/ BezantSoft