TECH WATCH
Compression wizardry
A Quick Fix for E-Mailing Photos
New software lets you edit photos, add an imbedded caption, and send an easily read file in minutes.
REPORTED BY MICHAEL ANTONIAK
E-mail's immediacy makes it an invaluable tool for keeping in touch with buyers and alerting them to the latest listings. Add a few digital images, and you also give them an opportunity to preview a home and gauge their real interest before scheduling a tour.
But e-mailing images also introduces potential problems that could undermine the advantages you might hope to achieve by communicating via e-mail. Since e-mail attachments are one of the primary ways computer viruses are spread, most recipients are wary of opening any unexpected e-mail with attachments.
There’s also a potential problem with file size. Some servers are set to reject incoming message larger than 1MB. And for any prospect on a low-bandwidth, 56k connection, downloading a message of that size can prove a frustrating wait.
Yet, even low-resolution digital photo files loaded straight from the camera often measure 100k or better, limiting the number of images you can include with a message.
But there are alternatives. One option is to upload your images to your Web site, and send clients a link to view the pictures. There’s no guarantee that clients will follow the link and view the image, however. And the steps involved in prepping and uploading several images may involve more time than you want to commit.
Or you can simply use the e-mail features built into Photolighting, to get images to your clients via e-mail. This new image management software application (from the company of the same name) reduces the steps involved in organizing digital photos and preparing them for e-mail distribution or printing. It’s available as a $39.95 download from the company’s Web site.
Although the software gives you the option to preview, organize, and even enhance images by sharpening detail or color, it’s the software’s ability to embed caption information in the image file and incorporate images into an outgoing e-mail message that make it particularly interesting to real estate practitioners. Once you’ve installed Photolightning on your PC, connected your camera, and made your preliminary photo selection, a window appears with thumbnail images, the file name of each, and a text box where you can add a caption.
“That caption becomes a part of the JPEG file and appears whenever the image file is opened,” says company President Dan Slavin.
The software also automates the steps involved in optimizing an image file for e-mail sharing for Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express users. With a click of the mouse, the software compresses the image information to reduce file size to around 40k. This compression won’t noticeably lose detail, provided that the image is viewed on a monitor as a 4-inch x 6-inch image. Thanks to the compression, you can include up to 10 images of a house in a 400k e-mail message, so you don’t need to worry about sending attachments, notes Slavin. “The entire process—downloading the e-mails, adding captions, and placing them in an e-mail—can be done in a couple of minutes without much work,” he says. (For a sample message, click here.)
Quick solutions for capturing and sharing pictures of homes are also appearing as options on some of the latest cell phones or PDAs with built-in or add-on cameras modules. (See the August “Tech Watch” column for details.)
But if you’re not ready to invest in this new service yet, Photolightning offers an inexpensive solution for getting them pictures of your latest listings as quickly as possible using your current Windows-powered laptop or PC.
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More Resources:
For more tips on using e-mail for marketing, visit the Tech Q&A.
Tips for Taking Better Digital Photos , Stephen Canale, December 2001.
Web Review: Digital Photography Review , Chris Leporini, May 2002.
Previously by Antoniak:
Improve Your Web Response
Redefining Portable Computing
Sidekick Offers a New All-in-One Mobile Option
PDA Competition Heats Up
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