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How do I create and email my Christmas Letter?

I have already snail mailed my cards and Christmas letter for this year, must there must be a better way to do it. I just can not figure out how to send a document with photos and text to my friends and relatives via e-mail.

Using Pages and a Template, I can write a 2 page document with 11 or 12 photos, and text describing what we have done over the last 12 months. Attaching this document in an email, creates a document too large to send. Saving it as a pdf, creates an even larger document. I realize it is the photos which create the size, but what is the easiest way to shrink them. Also, there are a number of backdrops in the templates, none of which are particularly "Christmassy". Is there somewhere I can find a Christmas template and use it for my letter?

Posted on Dec 16, 2012 5:19 PM

19 replies

babowa

Level 9

78,103 points

Dec 18, 2012 9:21 PM in response to B. James Lees

You're welcome; I had another thought: if you want a template, why don't you try to see if there are any apps available that will do what you want. I can't be of help with that since I create my stuff from scratch.

Dec 19, 2012 5:07 AM in response to B. James Lees

B. James Lees wrote:

I am unsure as to how to determine the pixel dimentions of the photo

Preview will tell you in the Inspector window or when you use Adjust Size as I described earlier.

Incidentally JPEG and .jpg are the sme thing.

Dec 19, 2012 7:40 AM in response to B. James Lees

Workflow

Note physical size of cropped image in your document:

click on it > Inspector > Metrics > Size > Width/Height

Open photo in Preview .app > Toolbar > Select > drag over crop to match the image as you had it in Pages > Menu > Tools > Crop / Adjust Size… > set Width & Height to match shape in Pages > Resolution: 300 for print/150 for good screen viewing/72 for smallest to email > Save as > Format: JPEG / Quality: 8 or less

The file size will be indicated at the foot of the dialog as you save

You may want to add a little bit of sharpening as well:

Menu > Tools > Adjust Color > Sharpness: drag to right till image looks harsh then drag back till it goes away

Drag back the reduced image into Pages

Peter

Dec 20, 2012 4:20 PM in response to PeterBreis0807

Hi Peter.

Thanks for your detailed reply.

Physical size of the photo in my Pages Document (( click on it > Inspector > Metrics > Size > Width/Height)) is 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches. No cropping was required.

By opening the photo in Preview, I can change the ((Toolbar > Select > drag over crop to match the images you had in Pages > Menu > Tools > Crop / Adjust Size as in Pages > Rssolution 150.)) The file size seems to be 109 KB.

But here I'm stuck. How do I ((Save as > Format: JPEG / Quality: 8 or less)) or even move the new image to desktop, etc.?

Jim

How do I create and email my Christmas Letter?