How to Send Large Photos by Email (Under the Attachment Limit)

Gmail allows about 25 MB per message, and Outlook.com and Yahoo are in the same range at roughly 20 to 25 MB. Corporate mail servers are often stricter. Attachments are encoded for transport, which adds about a third to their size, so a set of files that totals 20 MB on disk may already be over the limit when sent.

When you go over, Gmail may offer to turn the files into a Google Drive link, but not every recipient is happy to click one.

Most people do not need a 12-megapixel original in their inbox. Resizing the long side to 1600 to 2000 pixels and saving at quality 80 typically brings a 4 MB photo down to 300 to 600 KB. That is plenty for viewing on a screen and even for a normal 4 by 6 print.

Do all the pictures at once: a browser tool can resize and compress a whole batch and give you a single ZIP file.

If the photos come from an iPhone, recipients using older software may not be able to open HEIC. Convert them to JPG before sending. As a bonus you can compress them in the same step.

For documents, receipts and scans, merging pictures into one PDF is neater than attaching a dozen files. You pick the page size and order, and the recipient only needs to open a single file.

If the recipient needs the original, such as a photographer or a printer, use a link from a cloud storage service or a file transfer site rather than an attachment. Everyone else is best served by a compressed copy that opens instantly on a phone.