Stretched images in Mail

Bruce Whittington

Well-Known Member
Sometimes (infrequently) when I send an image in the body of an email in Mail, the image arrives vertically distorted, and appears that way in Mail if the recipient replies, and also appears that way if opened in a photo editing software. Sending the image in a folder seems to solve the problem. Explanations? Better practices?
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
I probably won't have an answer but I suspect those that might would need to know what is the format of the images you send, and how do you get the image into the email. Also does this happen when sent to a particular recipient and does it happen with recipients using a particular operating system (macOS, iOS, Windows etc.) or mail client? If you look in the Sent folder for an email that has arrived to your recipient in this distorted fashion, is it already distorted in your Sent folder?
It seems your issue isn't unique...


And various other articles I saw, seemed to involve Outlook.

Dave
 

Bruce Whittington

Well-Known Member
Thanks Dave - good questions. The image is a jpeg, and appears correctly in the Sent folder. It was sent as an attachment but appeared in the body of the email. I've asked the recipient for information on OS and mail app. And I also saw several discussions about this on the 'net, often referring to Outlook, but never a real explanation of what causes it, whether it is a Mac/PC thing, how to avoid it in future. A friend who does high quality digital printing works on a PC and he says Apple does something to images when it puts them in an email (including mine), I don't recall what and did not understand at the time, but wondered if this was related.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
Well, we have our culprit: outlook.

I believe (iirc) that this problem tends to show up when more than one image is being sent. When sending multiple images, it is best to collect them into a folder first, then right click on the folder and compress it. This sends all the images in a single file to the recipient, and seems to avoid the problem.
 

Bruce Whittington

Well-Known Member
I only sent one image, and it was altered. The issue does not come up consistently, but it does seem to involve Outlook, though I do not know which release of Outlook was being used. My friend that works with images told me (if I got this straight) that Apple puts image attachments in the body of the email in HTML (and not mime? He said they were not "true" attachments, I think . . .) He may have said something also about some forms of Outlook perhaps not reading or comprehending the Apple code that sets the image dimensions. He suggested switching the preference in Mail from sending Rich Text to sending Plain Text. I have not tried sending him that test email yet. Also, as I found out, putting the image in a folder works.
 

Bruce Whittington

Well-Known Member
I sent the same image to the original recipient after changing my setting in Mail from "Rich Text" to "Plain Text". She received it fine on her Mac laptop using Outlook (I assume in an Office suite?) but it was still stretched as before on her PC using Outlook.
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
When you add an image to an email, the default is to display it “inline” but you can right click on the image and change it to an icon, that may help avoid the issue.
 

Bruce Whittington

Well-Known Member
Thanks for that suggestion - I tried it when sending the same image to two Outlook recipients. In my draft, the icon appears, but not the image. (One recipient told me the "icon" is actually an html tag) Both received the image in the body of the email, not the icon; one was normal, one stretched, but the image was stretched in BOTH their replies to me. Time for better standardization in this business!
 
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