I have a problem with my email. I use Gmail and need to send images to my camera club for inclusion in club competitions. With a typical image the original is sized at 1440 pixels x 1920 pixels ( 4.8” x 6.4” ) but they come out the recipients end at around 0.8″ x 1.067” — severely reduced. I cannot find why this happens. Can you help?
Imagine you emailed someone a 30-page Word document and when they saved it the document only had 4 pages. Problem, right? Now imagine that you email them an image that’s 1920 x 1080 but when they save it and open it up, the image is only 480 x 270! That would not be good either, and that’s why as a general rule, all email systems ensure that every embedded image and attached file survives the trip perfectly intact.
This leads to the question; what’s happening with your colleague? Before we explore that, let’s just confirm that Gmail works as we expect with some experiments. I’m going to create a watercolor image of the Boulder Flatirons stone promontory on the edge of the Rocky Mountains as our baseline image and we can go from there…
THE BASELINE IMAGE
I’ll utilize Adobe Firefly to create the image and as you can see, it does a wonderful job:
I’m not showing it full size, but we can use the Mac Finder (or you could use Windows File Explorer) to reveal the filesize and image dimensions:
It’s 4650 x 3626 pixels, for a total filesize of 1.765MB (rounded up to 1.8MB).
EMBEDDING THE IMAGE IN A GMAIL MESSAGE
Now it’s time to open up Gmail and drag the image file into the window for inclusion:
You can safely guess that it’s not showing the image in full 4650-pixel width, so it’s reduced it to be fully visible – and easy to work with – within the message. Click on the image, however, and a small toolbar pops up with some adjustment options:
I’m going to send multiple messages for this test, Original size, Best fit, and Small. The Small, I’ll note, looks like a postage stamp in the message itself:
Visibly the Small is indeed smaller than the Best fit, but here’s the thing that will become obvious: This is just a display issue, the actual image sent is the same size every time.
IMAGES SAVED AND DRAGGED TO THE DESKTOP
I switch from a Mac to a PC and both save each image with the standard Gmail download button and also click and drag each onto the desktop, with mnemonic names. The result in File Explorer:
You can see that every single image is almost exactly the same size (for some reason dragging the image from the message results in a slightly smaller file, though the dimensions are the same). Notice that the “small size saved” Dimensions (the very bottom line on the right) remain 3650 x 3626. In other words, they all survive the trip intact, as we’d expect.
On the Mac you see the very same result with the small image saved and dragged versus the original “mountain-watercolor.jpg”:
So Gmail isn’t the culprit here.
WRAP IMAGES BY COMPRESSING THEM
You can also take a step to ensure that images survive any sort of digital journey by compressing them. Both Windows and MacOS offer an easy way to create what are known as ZIP archive files. For example, on the PC:
Right-click on the image, choose “Compress to ZIP file” and you’re good to go. On the Mac, you can Option-Click on an image and choose the Compress option:
In both instances, you won’t see any savings in file size (the usual reason people choose Compress or Archive), but it is a way to guarantee that the recipient gets a bit-for-bit duplicate of your original file.
SO WHAT’S GOING ON??
What I suspect is happening is that the difference here is one of image resolution. Let’s go back to your original message. You said your original image measures 4.8 inches x 6.4 inches but that the recipient is seeing them at 0.8 inches x 1.067 inches. But you’re working with a screen and they might be considering print resolution, a difference of 75dpi (dots per inch) versus 300dpi or even 400dpi. This means that an image that’s 1440 pixels wide at 75dpi ends up a far smaller 300 pixels wide, or if they’re using 400dpi, a minuscule 270 pixels wide.
This can easily account for the problem and it’s a tricky one if the images are going to be printed. The fix is within image editors: Either you need to adjust yours to be 300dpi or similar before you send it (you’ll then be able to resize it with the original available) or the recipient needs to use a lower resolution when they use your image. Search the help area of your favorite image editor to find these adjustments. Good luck!
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about Google for many years and have an extensive Google Tools Help area. Please check it out to find lots of additional tutorials and guides while you’re here. Thanks!