Attachments are Pixelating in Mac Mail

When I attach a document to my mail message, it pixelates so it's unreadable. Attachments never used to do this.... this is a new phenomena... which makes me think I must have changed some preference. I looked at mail preferences and other areas... but have been unable to determine the cause. This happens when I either directly drag the attachment into the draft email and/or when I go to the file menu, scroll down and click on attach file. It even happens with zipped files. The document, say a photoshop document that I've saved as a jpeg with a resolution of 100 (which reads fine on the screen), will become the size of a postage stamp and pixelate beyond recognition when attached to the email.

I used to create a photoshop document, convert the file to "save for web" and drag it to the email draft... and all would be well. Now it just pixelates when attached.

any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks

G4, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Sep 28, 2010 8:56 AM

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14 replies

Sep 28, 2010 2:31 PM in response to BDAqua

Hi

The files I'm attaching are not necessarily from iPhoto. Mostly photoshop files (sometimes jpeg sometimes psd. files) that I used to convert to "save for web"..... when I try to do that now, and when attached, they become very pixelated. They never did that... the files use to attach nicely, with no pixelation. I'm not sure why they are so pixelated now... a mystery. The file on the desktop is fine, when I attach to the mail draft, it gets pixelated.

Sep 29, 2010 7:28 AM in response to bocode

What you mentioned, that mail may be trying to attach the preview (icon image) I thought sounded good...that maybe that is what the problem could be.

I took an image (856kb, so a fairly small image size) opened it in photoshop and it looked fine. While in photoshop I copied it and pasted into the mail document. It pixelated. So this makes me think the mail program (mac mail) is doing something the image when it's placed in the mail message.

Any other thoughts? Thanks again for the help.

Oct 2, 2010 4:03 AM in response to BDAqua

Well.... I finally figured out what the problem is (was). When a file is attached to the mail document in the lower right corner of the mail draft is a drop down menu which allows you to change the size of the attached file (small, medium, large or actual size). My setting somehow got set to small... thus the pixelating. Thanks for your help....

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Attachments are Pixelating in Mac Mail

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