iPhone: The Missing Manual

Photos by Email—and by Text Message

You can send any photo—one you've taken with the iPhone, or one you've transferred from your computer—by email, which comes in handy more often than you might think. It's useful when you're out shopping and want to seek your spouse's opinion on something you're about to buy. It's great when you want to give your buddies a glimpse of whatever hell or heaven you're experiencing at the moment.

Once you're in the Photos program, tap the button, and then tap Email Photo. Now you can email it to someone, right from the phone. The iPhone automatically scales, rotates, and attaches the photo to a new outgoing message. All you have to do is address it (Writing Messages) and hit Send. (The fine print: You can attach only one photo per email. Photo resolution is reduced to 640 × 480 pixels. Void where prohibited.)

Tip

Most photo-sharing sites, like Flickr.com and Snapfish.com, let you send photos from a cameraphone directly to the Web by email. For example, Flickr will give you a private email address for this purpose (visit www.flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail) to find out what it is.

Keep in mind that this system isn't as good as syncing your camera shots back to your Mac or PC, because emailed photos get scaled down to 640 × 480 pixels—a very low resolution compared with the 1600 × 1200 originals.

Sending Photos to Cellphones

Now, if you had an ordinary cellphone, ...