Apple has published a tip on re-sizing photos in Mail “on the fly” which was picked up by TUAW (and others).

It points out that if you drag a full-sized photo into a new message window, you can then resize it using the drop-down menu in the bottom righthand corner to Large (1280×800 pixels), Medium (640×400) or Small (320×200) sizes:

Now, obviously, any Mail tip is a good one by definition and any resizing is better than none for your Sent Mail folder, your bandwidth and your recipient, but there is one thing that the tip doesn’t mention.

Mail sucks at resizing images.

A year ago, Rob Griffiths ran the tests and did the sums when the same tip was posted on macOSXHints. He discovered that Photoshop is between 61% and 73% more efficient at the same tasks. Even iPhoto itself does a better job.

Not everyone owns or likes sledge hammer apps like Photoshop, but if you do this a lot, you could consider utilities like Downsize or Scale to Mail, which will resize your images efficiently without the need to fire up the monster.

If you are reading this but for some perverse reason don’t use Mail, resized photos may still be within your grasp. If you use Claris Emailer, GyazMail, Mailsmith, Outlook Express, PowerMail or QuickMail Pro, Simon Jacquier’s iPhoto Mailer Patcher lets you hack iPhoto to set your email client as the recipient of resized photos.iphoto, mail.app, apple mail, images, photos, resizing, mailsmith, powermail, gyazmail, tips

Email Backup and its shareware version Email Backup Pro have been updated.

The more fully-featured Email Backup Pro (shareware, USD 9.95) has improved restore functions, including the ability to restore backups made with the freeware version.

Also, you can now launch a restore by clicking on the backup file in Finder.

It now also supports GyazMail .

The freeware version (1.1.2) now quits the email client first in order to produce a more reliable backup.

You can read more about these simple backup utilities on the developer’s web pages for Email Backup and Email Backup Pro .mail.app, apple mail, email, thunderbird, entourage, eudora, gyazmail, backup

Simon Jacquier’s iPhoto Mailer Patcher is been updated so that it will work with any version of iPhoto 4.0 to 6.0.4.

By default, iPhoto’s “Send photos by email” feature only supports AOL, Eudora, Mail.app and Microsoft’s Entourage. iPhoto Mailer Patcher adds support for Claris Emailer, GyazMail, Mailsmith, Outlook Express, PowerMail and QuickMail Pro. Only Thunderbird misses out, due to its “unscriptability”.

Getting Simon’s hack to work with iPhoto 5 or 6 used to involve manually editing the ClientAppSignatures.plist file in iPhoto’s package. It was messy. Now it is all automated by the Patcher’s installer.

iPhoto Mailer Patcher is donation-ware and is available from Simon’s web site .iphoto, mail.app, apple mail, thunderbird, GyazMail, mailsmith, powermail, quickmail pro, email in general, photos, email, apple

“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”.

This saying is regrettably well-known to people like me who because they run a tech blog are regularly called upon by fellow workers (or worse, bosses) to fix interrupt conflicts on their PCs or discover why their Outlook 2000 Net Folders are not working properly.

It is also true of the recent macOSXhints poll data. The data is unsound in lots of ways, but in the absence of any other information, it’s the best we’ve got.

Hawk Wings reader Skid Kennedy, who is a retired engineer, kindly sent in an analysis of the two polls:

This makes some of the gains and losses easier to grasp. The big sleeper is GyazMail , a client to which I pay little attention because it doesn’t support IMAP. It saw a staggering 333% increase, rising from 23 users in the first poll to 181 in the second. Statisticians will rightly have their concerns, but this still seems like impressive growth over two years.

The AOL increase seems massively at odds with the anecdotal evidence, as Skid points out, and looks especially odd to me in a poll that I expect to be geek-heavy.

I am personally convinced (again largely by anecdotal evidence) that Thunderbird’s rise is due to the increased penetration of IMAP, Mail.app’s continued IMAP quirks and the similarity of interface that Thunderbird enjoys across platforms.thunderbird, mail.app, apple mail, gyazmail, IMAP, AOL, email, mail clients

MegaPixel Maven posts a tip on resizing photos in Mail.app using the “Image Size” drop box in the bottom right-hand corner of the Compose window.

As the author points out, you can use this function to reduce an image in the Compose window to Large (1280×800 pixels), Medium (640×400) or Small (320×200) sizes.

Three points:

• Mail does a really bad job of reducing the image. Rob Griffiths ran some tests on this when the tip was posed on macOSXHints last year. He discovered that Photoshop is between 61% and 73% more efficient at the same tasks. Even iPhoto itself does a better job.
• Another option is to use a utility like Downisze or Scale to Mail, which will resize your images efficiently without the need to fire up a monster like Photoshop.
• If you use Claris Emailer, GyazMail, Mailsmith, Outlook Express, PowerMail or QuickMail Pro, Simon Jacquier’s iPhoto Mailer Patcher lets you hack iPhoto to set your email client as the recipient of resized photos. Instructions can be found in an earlier Hawk Wings post.

iphoto, mail.app, apple mail, images, photos, resizing, mailsmith, powermail, gyazmail, tips

One of the really nice things about Mail.app is the way it works closely with other iApps like iCal, Address Book and iPhoto. But Mail doesn’t have the stranglehold on integration.

A while ago, I posted about iPhoto Mailer Patcher, a hack for iPhoto that allows you to set Claris Emailer, GyazMail, Mailsmith, Outlook Express, PowerMail or QuickMail Pro as the default email client to which iPhoto sends resized images for you to email.

ZappTek provides hacks to help other email clients send iCal notifications. There are patches for Entourage, Eudora, Mailsmith, PowerMail and GyazMail.

Because it lacks AppleScript support, Thunderbird misses out on both counts.

Think carefully though. The developer warns that you will need to reinstall iCal in order to undo the installer’s modifications, if you change your mind later.mail.app, apple mail, iphoto, ical, notification, GyazMail, Mailsmith, PowerMail, Eudora, Thunderbird

Before Christmas, I blogged about iPhoto Mailer Patcher. It was a time to share the love.

iPhoto Mailer Patcher is an AppleScript-based utility for iPhoto that allows you to set Claris Emailer, GyazMail, Mailsmith, Outlook Express, PowerMail or QuickMail Pro as the default email client to which iPhoto sends resized images for you to email.

By default, iPhoto only supports Eudora, Mail.app, Entourage and AOL.

But the Patcher only works with iPhoto 4. To get it work with iPhoto 5 you will need to follow the instructions left by the developer Simon Jacquier in the comments to the original post.

The instructions and some screenshots follow the jump.

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