why does mail embed my pictures

If you mean the picture is showing up as the photo instead of a document icon (or vice versa) right click on the picture/icon and the last option in the pop-up menu will toggle the state. As far back as I can recall Mail has been showing most photos as a picture but not always. I never have been able to figure out how the program decides.

You haven’t done anything wrong. Mail normally embeds pictures when they aren’t huge. When they are very large they generally show as an icon. There are some exceptions to this, sometimes a small picture will show as an icon and I'm not sure why.

Have you rechecked your settings in Edit > Attachments?

I have had this issue with mail, all I do now if I want to send photo which can be unattached by the receiver is to save the photo into a file and send the file.

regards.....

I am sorry I should have send folder, create a folder on the desktop and drag pics into it and then drag the folder into an email and send. Hope this helps.

cheers....

Probably the easiest way to do this is to compress the photo and send it as a zip file.