How To Attach Images To Mail Messages On a Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you different ways that you can add a photo to an email message on your Mac. 

Now occasionally I'll get somebody asking me how they can attach a photo to an email message. Well, of course, there's a way to do this. In fact there are many different ways to do this. So I'm going to use this as an opportunity to talk about ways that perhaps can work together on your Mac. 

For instance, here I am in Mail and I've started composing a new email message. Let's say I want to insert a photo into this message. Now this photo can come from the Photos App or perhaps it is from a file that you just have in a folder in the Finder. Let's start with the Photos App. 

When you want to get two apps to work together you should always think about four different primary methods. The first is to use a Command that will directly do what you want, like inserting a photo here in this message. Sometimes this is called Insert. Sometimes it is called Import. Sometimes it is called Attach. Alternatively you could look for a way to Drag & Drop items from one app to another. Third, you can usually go to one app and Copy an item and then go to another app and then Paste what you have copied at that location. Fourth, there are often ways to use the Share Menu or Context Menu to take it an item and send it to that other app. 

So for instance in Mail here I want to insert a photo. Let's try the first method. Command. If I look around and go to the File Menu I'll see right there I've got Attach Files. There's even a keyboard shortcut. Sometimes commands like this are even in the Toolbar as well. Sure enough in Mail there's actually a button in the Toolbar, by default,  to allow you to attach a file. Both this button and the File Menu will do the same thing. They will bring up a File Dialogue. But in this case we want to get a photo from the Photos App. Not from a file. The way to do that is when you're in dialogue like this where selecting a file to import, insert, or attach look in the left sidebar. Usually if at the bottom you'll see a media section and one of the items there will be Photos. This will give you direct access to your Photos Library. You can then browse through the photos. You can Search. You can change your View options, if you like. You can simply select an item like this one. Click, Choose File and it will insert that item in. 

Now let's try the second method. Drag & Drop. To do that I want to bring up the Photos App. So here I can see my photos in my library in the Photos App. I can still see over here the Mail Message. You can move the windows around and position them as you like so you can see both locations. Find the item you want and simply drag it from one app into the other. You can see it does the same things here. I get the image in my message. 

The third method, remember, is Copy & Paste. So in this case select something here. You can go to Edit and Copy or just Command C. Then go to Mail and use Edit and then Paste or Command V to paste it in. 

The last method is to Share. In this case you would select a photo, like say this one here, and then you can click on this button here in the Toolbar which is available in a lot of different apps. But you can usually also find it in File, Share. Both get you to the same place, this little menu here that allows you to Share the selected item in a variety of different ways. In this case we have Mail as one of the options. So if I selected that it will actually create a new email message here and put that item in there. So that might not be ideal for this situation if we've already been composing an email message in this window. But it is a great alternative if you haven't started the message yet. 

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Now let's take those four methods and use them to attach an image file. So the image isn't in the Photos App, it's not in our Library, it's an independent file. You can use this button or go to File, Attach Files. Then you can use this window to navigate to where you want. You can click here to navigate to a recent place. I'm going to use the Sidebar here to go to Documents and then down into Images and there is the image that I want.  I can choose the file.  

But I could also Drag & Drop. If I have the Finder window open, like I had the Photos window open before, I can simply Drag a file from the Finder into Mail. Copy & Paste works too. I can select the file, use Edit, and then Copy or Command C and then Command V to paste. 

Share works as well here. I can click this button here or use File, Share and I can choose to send a Copy, so you want to make sure you select that item correctly, and choose Mail and you can see how it create a new mail message and it has the image in there. 

All of these things work with multiples as well. So for instance in the Finder I can select this item. Command Click to select this one. Command Click to select a third. Or I can click one and Shift Click to select a range. I can drag them all in. I can Copy and I can Paste them all in and have multiple images pasted at once. 

Let's look at the third example and you'll see why it is important to understand all four of these different methods. Let's take a Screenshot. So let's say I just want to take a  screenshot here. I'm going to do Shift, Command 5 to bring up the screenshot interface. Under Options I want to have Show Floating Thumbnail turned On. I'm going to select a portion here. So let's just grab just a little portion of the screen, like this area here say, and if I Capture I get the floating thumbnail at the bottom. I'll click that and if you try the Insert, Import, Attach method here you'll see it's really no way to do that. There's no place here where there is going to be Command in Mail to do it. 

So some of the apps, like Preview, actually do let you insert screenshots but not in Mail. But other options will work. For instance, while I'm looking at this floating thumbnail here, if  I use Command C to copy and then I'll just click Trashcan here to throw away that screenshot, I can now use Command V to Paste it into the message. Likewise, I can use just Drag & Drop. So I can take this screenshot, like before, but I'm going to take this thumbnail and drag it into Mail. So Drag & Drop works. Also, Sharing works. If I capture, I click here, you can see I've got this little Share Button right there. I can click it and there's Mail and I can create a new Mail Message with that image attached. 

So using Screenshots, the first method, the Insert, Import, Attachment method doesn't work but the other three do. It's important to know about all of them because in some situations some of them won't be available. In some situations some are just far easier to use than others. 

Now while those four methods can be used in a lot of different apps, there sometimes are additional methods that are specific to an app. In Mail you've got this special Media Button here. You can click there and then choose Photos or Photos is the only option for you. It just automatically opens up this window and you can browse through your photos. You can actually look in places like Favorites and People and such. You can do a search and from here you can Drag & Drop into your message. You can also bring this window up or Close it in Window, Photo Browser. 

Now I can't do a video talking about images in Mail Messages without pointing out a very important feature. If you have an image attached to your message look very carefully for this image size setting that will appear. You've got Small, Medium, Large, Actual Size, or the original image. The difference between these two is actual size will compress the image a little bit but leave it the same size. Original Image will not attempt to compress the image at all. If you select one of these, like small, you can see how it makes the image much smaller. In this case you see the message size is now 37K whereas if I were to choose Actual Size you can see it is 3MB. Original Image is sometimes larger, sometimes smaller. In this case the original image is only 2.1 MB. It is a very well compressed image now in HVIC format. But actual size gets me a JPEG which doesn't compress it as well. 

I can go to Large and it really doesn't change the image that much. Most people would be perfectly happy to get an image of this quality and you can see the size is a lot smaller. But Medium you'll start to see it definitely being a smaller image and small is really tiny. 

Now if you're just sending a photo to somebody it may not matter so much. But what if you're sending a screenshot. Here's a screenshot I took of the whole screen in actual size. You can see how easy it is to see what's going on in the screenshot. But if you select Small you can't even really read the text that's in there. Note that it will remember your setting. So if you set it small for a photo and then next time send a screenshot it's going to choose Small and the person getting your screenshot isn't going to be able to see what you want them to see. So always pay careful attention to image size and set it appropriately for that particular message. 

Now variation on attaching images to an email message is to export them first from photos and in doing so you can be very specific about the quality.  So I'm going to, say, select this photo here, this photos, and this photo. Then I'm going to go to File, Export. I'm going to export three photos here. I can set the type, so JPEG for maximum compatibility with people with older computers. I can say I don't want the location information included with these. I'm going to click here. Now I can choose the quality. So, I can make a smaller file by choosing medium quality instead. I can also choose a smaller size. Let's choose Medium size. I'll export these just to the Desktop as a temporary holding place.

Now I've got these three images here. I can Drag & Drop these into my email message. I can then choose Actual Size here. The actual size still isn't that big because remember I exported them at a specific size and quality. So you can see all three images will just be 1.1 MB now and I have much more control over the quality of the images by exporting them first. Obviously the downside is there are a lot more steps involved. 

I can't really finish this video without talking about what I think is a better option than sending images via email. You're just sending these large files to somebody that may have limited bandwidth or slow connection and it may not be ideal for them to just be getting this huge email. Instead, always consider when you've got the photos already in your Photos App, usually in iCloud, you can just select the photos you want. You can then go to File, Share and share them as a Shared Album. So I want to create a new one here. I'll just call this one Test Album. I can create it and if I look down here in Shared Albums I'll see it there now and I can go into it and by using this button here I can set this up to make it Public. Turn these Off and you see I get this link here. So I could click on that link and this is what others will see when they go to that link. I can Control Click on this and Copy the Link. Then in the Mail Message instead of putting any attachments at all, send a really short small message here with just this link in it. The recipient will be able to click on this link and then view the videos on the web. 

This is a much better way to share a whole bunch of images with several different people. Instead of sending all these large files around to everyone, you're just sending a simple email with a link or include the link in a text message instead. Have the added benefit that you can alter that link later on. For instance I'll add this photo to that album here. You can see it's got a fourth one in there. I don't even have to send the email or message again to anybody. Anyone that goes to the link will now see four images instead of three. So Shared Albums definitely have a ton of advantages to actually attaching images in an email. But keep in mind all those other techniques like Command, Drag & Drop, Copy & Paste, and Share. They work in lots of other situations, for instance, bringing images into a Pages document, adding a file to a text message, and so on. You'll find that if you always think about these four methods you usually can find ways to do what you want. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.