How to Compress Images for Email Attachments
The 25MB Wall
Most major email providers, including Gmail and Outlook, impose a strict 25MB limit on attachments. If you try to send a batch of high-resolution photos from your recent vacation or a scanned multi-page document, you will quickly hit this wall and the email will bounce.
Solutions to Send Large Files
While you could upload the files to Google Drive or Dropbox and send a link, sometimes you just want to send the actual files directly. To do this, you must compress the images.
How to Compress for Email
- Resize the Dimensions: A 24-megapixel photo from a DSLR is overkill for an email. Resize the longest edge to 1920 pixels. This alone will reduce the file size by 80% while still looking perfectly sharp on any monitor.
- Lower JPEG Quality: Compress the images to a JPEG quality of around 70-80%. The visual difference is negligible, but the byte savings are massive.
- ZIP the Files: Once compressed, put all the images into a ZIP folder. This keeps the email tidy and adds a slight layer of extra compression.
Using a bulk image compressor makes this entire process take less than 30 seconds.