Emailing Photos with Picasa and Gmail

Picasa makes it very easy to email your photos.  It even takes care of resizing the pictures appropriately.  All you have to do is select the picture(s) you want to send and click the Email button.  If you use this technique you are also guaranteed that your recipient will see the picture as it looks in Picasa – with all your edits applied.

Gmail is the best way to send

You must already have an email program.  Picasa doesn’t actually perform the emailing for you – it just prepares the photos for attaching, then opens your email program.  All you have to do is address it and click Send.  Picasa can use your default email program installed on your computer – like Outlook, or Eudora, or Thunderbird.  If you don’t have an email program on your computer, you need to use Gmail.



Gmail is free and easy – and you know it will work well with Picasa since it is also part of the Google family of software.  The only objection I hear from users is that they don’t want to use a gmail address.  Everyone knows them at another address (e.g. JoeSmith@juno.com) that they’ve used for years and they don’t want to change.

You don’t need to change your email address!

Gmail has a cool feature called ‘Custom From Address.’  So, using Joe Smith’s example above, he can have a Gmail address called JoeSmith123@gmail.com.  But he can change the settings in Gmail so that all mail that is sent is From JoeSmith@juno.com.  You must of course prove to Gmail that you own the other address, and follow the  Custom From Address instructions to set it up.  Make sure to assign the ‘Default’ designation to the address that you want to be used most often.

You can set up Gmail to send and/or receive from many different email addresses.  I have my account set up to reply to messages using whatever address was used in the original email.  So if you send an email to me@xyz.com and I reply, the reply will be From me@xyz.com.  If I send a new email, it will be From whatever address I have set up as the Default.  Even though I use Gmail for all my email, you will almost never see an email from me@gmail.com.

Juno, AOL, MSN, Earthlink, Yahoo

I get a lot of questions about problems using Picasa to send email with the above accounts.  Although  I do know that people have been able to configure their Default Email to work successfully with them, it is a lot of trouble, and a subsequent upgrade to Picasa, or the email software, or your browser, can render it useless.  I say don’t bother!  Just get a free Gmail account and set it up to use your other address as the default ‘From’ address.

Use Picasa Web Albums

Of course, the best solution is not to email pictures at all but to upload them to your Picasa Web Albums instead. Then just email your friends to go look at them there

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

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Emailing Photos

Upload Photos to the Web

How Picasa Handles Edits

 

 

Get a Gmail Account (Free)

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