Email photo as attachment, not embedded, in iOS 14

Expanding: With iOS 11 Apple made the default photo format HEIF, which is a newer international standard (NOT an Apple one-off). HEIF stores higher quality images than JPEG with greater compression, meaning the files are smaller. However, many photo management packages do not support HEIF unless you update them to the latest version. For things like Photoshop this can be expensive. And Microsoft doesn’t fully support it yet, even though it is now 3 years old.

To deal with the potential incompatibility issues there is an option (see below) to convert an HEIF photo to JPEG when sending via email or another transfer mechanism. Here is more information on HEIF ➡️ Using HEIF or HEVC media on Apple devices - Apple Support

If you would prefer to continue using JPEG on your Apple devices you can make it the default; go to Settings/Camera and select “Most Compatible” for the photo format. “High Efficiency” will store photos as HEIF.

If you want to keep HEIF (or RAW on phones that support RAW) on your phone for the dual advantages of reduced size and higher resolution, go to Settings/Photos; under Transfer to Mac or PC if you choose “Automatic” photos will be converted to JPEG upon export to devices other than Apple devices. The setting Keep Originals will always transfer the images as HEIF regardless of the target device.

Historical note: JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group format), a “lossy” way to compress images by lowering their resolution, was originally released in 1992. After 28 years, it’s time for a newer format that can take advantage of the higher resolution cameras and user expectations about photo quality.

Please, casual_observer, don’t fall into the trap of judging purely by appearances.

Yes. Practically all email clients will render (display) attachments inline with the rest of the email (such as the text) when displaying a rich-text email (which uses HTML, just like webpages, by the way): that is precisely what the email Internet standard states they should do, are supposed to do.

While Gmail, for instance, will render (display) rich-text emails in that manner, it continues to allow you, the user, to perform bulk attachment operations (like bulk-saves) the same way as with the old plain-text emails.

Similarly for Apple Mail.

I suspect that Yahoo and AOL are similar.

Isn’t Hotmail a Microsoft email system? Sort of a publicly available Microsoft Exchange server?

If so, unless one uses a third party client, one may fall into the Outlook issue, again, there.

Those of us that are giving this assessment are not doing so lightly!

Like me, they have studied the reports carefully, and worked diligently on reproducing the issue(s) and finding workarounds.

It was the commonalties of both the issues and the workarounds that lead to these conclusions.

We are not privy to what Apple actually changed, though we can easily and directly verify, for instance, that the files are still included as attachments: that has never changed, and, as I’ve stated, highly unlikely to ever change, in the foreseeable future.

(Anyone that knows enough about the technology can view the raw email, and verify such.)

Part of the reason texting “pics” works is it doesn’t use the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) at all. Instead, it uses Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) protocols. (Such MMS messages may not include any formatting, so they may be transformed into plain-text emails, during the transfer process.)

Welcome, dmaz1, to Apple Support Communities!

There is, actually, nothing for Apple to “fix”.

Besides, Apple isn’t here. It’s just us, fellow users trying to help other fellow users.

The best you can do, to get any change from Apple, is to use the Apple Mail Feedback (for iOS, iPadOS, or macOS), and request that Apple provide an option to allow y’all to set the default email authoring format to be plain-text.

This might help the situation y’all are experiencing, but, since the actual issue is on the Microsoft side of email programs (Exchange and Outlook), there is absolutely no guarantee!

An even better approach—one that is guaranteed to solve the problems, if successful—is to get Microsoft to stop having Outlook preventing you, the customer, from performing bulk attachment operations (like bulk-saves), based solely upon how Outlook chooses to render (display) your received emails!

What y’all choose to do, about this situation, is up to y’all.

#1. When something stop working normally after you upgrade to the latest iOS, it is an Apple issue.

#2. Apple is watching these forums. Try posting where you can have your iPhone repaired and I bet it will get deleted. LoL

I found that if you Select your photos first, then upload to Outlook, they do end up as attachments.

If you do the same thing with Native Mail, photos will insert in the body.

Sorry, have found a way to make it work in Native Mail yet. Time to go for that "change" and start using Outlook instead?

There was a poster from yesterday that indicated he was on a non-Microsoft platform and the problem was still happening with the email he was using (not Outlook) with photos only being able to be inserted into email (not as attachments). This led him to believe that it was an Apple problem and not a Microsoft problem.

If you select to share the photos by email directly from photos folder they should go as attachments. If they still don't go as attachments then before you choose to email click on Options and select Individual photo and click done, it worked for me.

There is another trick that works: before you insert the photos in a new email you are composing, first attach a small video and after the photos and it works. Everything gets delivered as an attachment

Not sure it helps but I have an issue who seems similar to yours : when I or my wife send pictures by mail with iPhones to my professional laptop on outlook the photos are embedded. So after some research it seems that deleting (left blank) the automatic signature in the mail setting in the iPhone solves the problem.

Welcome, GRO1959, to Apple Support Communities!

So far as any of us have seen, the only email client that forces its users to save attached files, such as pictures, one-at-a-time, is Microsoft Outlook, and it only has this misbehavior when Outlook chooses to render (display) a received email in a certain way: in a way that looks as if files are inline, even though they are attachments, as they always are.

(The ability to render emails with attached files, such as pictures, inline with text, was introduced before 1996.)

No misunderstanding at all, ahungryhungarian.

Unfortunately, it is you who is basing your assessment solely upon appearances, rather than actuality/reality/functionality.

(An all too natural human tendency: judging based solely upon appearances. It’s the basis of all prejudice.)

All photos, as well as other file types, have always been, and continue to be attachments to emails. (It has been that way at least since ‘96. Even as rich-text formats, which allow photos and other files to appear inline with formatted text, came on the scene, soon thereafter, they remained as attachments, regardless of appearances.)

Since such are always attachments, all email clients—except for a tiny subset (consisting only of Microsoft Outlook, so far)—allow users to perform bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) upon attachments (including photos), regardless how any received email is displayed (rendered).

steeve130:

Sure. There was a change in either the default way Apple Mail formats authored emails, or in the implementation of a newer version of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) Internet standard used to transfer email from Apple Mail to your chosen SMTP email server (going to a Microsoft Exchange email server seems to be the only troublesome link, here), or both; that seems to have triggered the issue that already existed in Microsoft Outlook.

This is just part of the fragility of any attempt to try to get Microsoft Outlook to “do the right thing”™️.

Such will continue to be fragile (subject to being easily broken), until Microsoft fixes this misbehavior in their Outlook software.

Unfortunately, Microsoft is highly unlikely to fix this issue, unless y’all let them know that this misbehavior causes you difficulty.

Y’all are also encouraged to provide Feedback to Apple, but anything they may do will remain fragile, until Microsoft Outlook has this issue corrected.

(By the way, you do know that Hotmail is a Microsoft Exchange server. Right?)

Apple isn’t here, N-K-O.

Only fellow users.

The best approach for getting Feedback to Apple is through their Feedback mechanisms.

In this case, that would be Feedback on Apple Mail, or iOS, or your iPhone.

Since the photos, and such, are still attachments—regardless how they may appear—asking for “photos as attachments, not embedded” will produce no affect.

Since Apple has no control over how other email clients render/display, or permit you to interact with the attachments within your received email; trying to get Apple to “fix” such will produce no affect.

Since Apple has no control over how other email servers implement the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), or whether other email servers are up-to-date on their implementations, asking Apple to change their implementation just to accommodate an email server that isn’t up-to-date, will produce no affect.

You might have some success in asking Apple to allow users to choose the old plain-text (text/plain) email format as their default email authoring format. That is within Apple’s control!

However, there is simply no guarantee that this will solve the issues with other email servers or clients.

It might, but there’s simply no guarantee.

In fact, the historic record demonstrates that trying to make changes to influence other software to “do the right thing”™️ is fragile, at best: such affects are easily broken, from tiny changes, anywhere in the web of interactions.

What is guaranteed to solve your issues, is to get the developers of the single errant email client (and its associated email server) to correct their software, so you, as the user, have the ability to perform bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) regardless how said email client chooses to render/display your received emails.

No other email client has this issue, so far as anyone has seen.

So. Whether this issue is ever truly fixed is up to y’all.

I work for a construction company and we are constantly sending pictures through email of our job sites. We have the same problem and it’s very frustrating. And very wasteful of my time as I am the one saving them all. They should at least have an option in your settings for email to attach photos or embed them. Or making an option on the email itself. Please fix this Apple!

I found a solution! When you choose the photo(s) you want to send in an email - once the photo has been embedded in the email you can tap on the picture and it gives you the option to send as an attachment... I hope this helps. It was driving me crazy as well.

HLA1977:

Did you notice my reply to N-K-O, above, at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251807601?answerId=254126172022#254126172022?

Need I guess what email client you are using when «saving them[pictures] all»?

So far as anyone, within the users on Apple Support Communities, has been able to determine, so far, there is only one email client (and its derivatives) that prevents its users from performing bulk attachment operations (such as bulk-saves) based only upon how the email client chooses to display (render) your received email!