Images are a great way to make your business/organization’s eNewsletter look outstanding and increase click throughs, but if your email gets too large, it could get caught in Spam filters.

If you send your own emails through Outlook or a service like Constant Contact, we’ve got step by step instructions for optimizing your images using Picnik or Photoshop.

Picnik.com
Picnik is one of the most impressive free web applications we’ve seen since gMail. It allows you to make many of the photo edits that were previously only available through Photoshop.

To optimize an image for an email:

1. Go to http://www.picnik.com
2. Click Edit
3. Upload the image you need to optimize
4. Resize and/or crop your image to exactly the size you need (emails should typically be about 600 pixels wide).         
5. Click Save & Share
6. Save your file as either a jpg or gif         
7. Use the follow settings:
   • For JPGS (best for pictures) JPG Compression Quality = 7
   • For GIFS (best for logos, text & blocks of color without gradation)

Photoshop
Photoshop is still the most powerful and user friendly desktop image editing software available. Every office that handles marketing internally should have a copy.

To optimize an image for an email:

1. Open your image file in Photoshop
2. Under Images/Image Size set the Resolution to 72 pixels
3. Under Images/Image Size, resize the image to exactly the size you need (emails should typically be about 600 pixels wide).
4. Re-save the File using ”Save to Web and Devices“
5. Save your file as either a jpg or gif         
6. Use the follow settings:

For JPGS (best for pictures)

For GIFS (best for logos, text & blocks of color without gradation)

Note: You can adjust the number next to ”colors” down. Use your judgement. Play with that setting, if the number gets too low the edges of your text/logo will start to look jagged. Example:

Correct # of colors:

Color # set too low:

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Katie Hawkey Categories: General, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web