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For six years, the Internet Nexus served as my technology blog, but I've since started blogging at the SuperSite Blog instead. If you're looking for the blog, please head there. --Paul

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Tiger Feature of the Day: Mail 2 photo integration

Tiger's new Mail 2 application includes a number of new features, some of which are related to iPhoto integration and digital photos. For example, the new photo controls in Mail let you resize photos before they are sent. And when you receive photos in an email message, Mail can display a slideshow. Here's how they work.

If you drag photos into a Mail message window, they are stored in the message body with their original size by default. However, a new Image Size drop-down list, available in the lower right corner of the window, lets you choose between three different sizes for all of the images in the message.

The sizes are listed as Small, Medium, and Large (as well as Actual Size), but each of those names also equates to a pixel size, as follows:

Small (320 x 240)
Medium (640 x480)
Large (1280 x 960)
Actual Size

When you receive photos via email, Mail offers some new features as well. There are two buttons next to the attachments line, Save and Slideshow. Save, as you might expect, launches a Finder Save dialog so you can copy the attached photos to your hard drive. Slideshow, meanwhile, launches a nice Slideshow applet, although you'll have to wait for the images to download, which can take a while, depending on their size.

When you wiggle the mouse during the slideshow, you'll see the toolbar. The buttons, from left to right, are Back, Play/Stop, Next, Index Sheet, Fit to Screen, Add to iPhoto, and Close. The Index Sheet option is kind of interesting: It displays all of the photos in the slideshow together on the screen at one time.

OK, I cheated. I'm really describing three different features here, according to Apple (using Tiger math). In Apple's view, Photo Controls in Mail, Slideshows in Mail, and Mail and iPhoto integration ("add photos that you receive in email directly to iPhoto with a single click") are all individual features. That last one isn't too elegant: To add photos to iPhoto "with a single click," you actually have to instantiate the slideshow first (one click). Then, you need to add each photo one at a time, using the Add to iPhoto slideshow button (one more click for each photo). Or, you can click and hold (is that a click?) on the Save button, and scroll down to "Add to iPhoto" while holding down the mouse button. Then, release the mouse button.

Thanks to dogg for pointing out that last possibility.

[ Posted at 4:08 PM | Permalink ]