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

Chris T asks on Yahoo! Answers:

How do I get mail.app in OS X, to not display attached images automatically, like what it defaultly does for the junk mail, where you have to click “Load Images”, because I get a lot of images spam, and too big images.

Luckily, a plugin called Mail Attachments Iconizer exists precisely to help people who often get too big images.

When it is installed, images and other attachments like PDFs are always displayed as icons.

If you find an image or PDF you would like to view in place, the plugin adds a “View in place” option to the Contextual Menu:

I don’t use it myself as I live in a text-based world, but I know graphic designers who swear by it.

Mail Attachments Iconizer is shareware (USD 6) and is available from the developer’s web site .tips, images, pdfs, icon, display inline, plugins, mail.app, apple mail

The utility that I use to wrangle many of the icons on the Alternative Mail Stamp Icons List has just been updated.

img2icns is a freeware, open-source application that converts image files (supporting every format that I have ever thrown at it) into mac-friendly icons.

Its redesigned interface offers you a choice of output formats – icns file or a folder with an attached icon – and an export path.

Conversion is as easy as dropping the image(s) onto the interface’s bulls-eye:

It’s a very handy tool to have in the cupboard. Better yet, it doesn’t cost anything.

The app is freeware and available from the developer’s web site .images, icons, convert, freeware, mail.app, stamp icon

Spammers have discovered a new trick.

According to a report in USA Today, image-based spam is experiencing a huge growth spurt. Late last year it accounted for 1% of total spam messages; now it has suddenly risen to 21%.

In the newspaper article, journalist Jon Swartz describes the problem:

The newest spam uses technology that varies the content of individual messages — through colors, backgrounds, picture sizes or font types — so they appear to be distinct to spam filters… As a result, the messages are like snowflakes: No two are alike… The surge in new spam has largely eluded software filters and eaten up space on e-mail systems because each message is more than seven times larger than regular spam…

I’ve certainly noticed a recent surge in the amount of spam getting past Apple Mail’s excellent Junk Filter.

Much of it is image-based, although I am favoured more with various aids for my sexual potency than with the stock scams that are usually associated with image spam.

Mail’s Junk filter, based on Latent Semantic Analysis, only gets smarter as it goes along. I hope it is not a slow learner. Although, since the filter is text-based, this new form of spam may have outflanked it.

[Thanks, Bob]mail.app, apple mail, spam, junk filter, images, email, Internet, stock scams

If you spend a lot of time taking screenshots (as I do), you will like Screenshot Plus, an image capture widget with a very neat trick up its sleeve.

Like other screenshot widgets (Capture for example) it can take fullscreen grabs, selections or particular windows. Unlike Capture, it can also do timed screenshots and grab individual widgets. These options are presented nicely on the front of the widget:

On the rear, the widget offers something truly time-saving. By default it displays the screenshot as a preview after capture, but you can set it (as above) to import the screenshot directly into your image editor of choice.

In my case that’s Photoshop. The time (and finger-wear) I will save by not clicking and dragging from Desktop to app is immense. It will even launch the editor for you if it’s not already open.

Of course, I can still make a cup of coffee while Photoshop loads, but that’s not the widget’s fault.

A drop-down menu allows you to specify your destination of choice—another image editor or iPhoto or whatever.

Images can be captured as png, tiff, jpg, jp2, pdf, gif, bmp, or pict files.

A new version released a few days ago adds 10.4.7 compatibility and better French language support.

Screenshot Plus is freeware and available from the developer’s web site . screenshot, capture, images, productivity, widget, time-saving, helpful apps, not apple mail

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

Californian Security Researcher Tom Ferris has found another seven security flaws in Mac OSX.

They mostly involve the handling of images and decompression of zip files.

He expects that they will be addressed in the next Apple security update.

A St Louis Post-Dispatch article on the flaws urges caution , “Avoid opening strange or unusual e-mail attachments, and beware of Web links embedded in unsolicited Web correspondence.”

As many people pointed out during the excitement of the last round of security flaws, this has been pretty sensible advice since, like, forever.security, exploits, zip files, mac osx, images, attachments, mail.app, apple mail