Digitial photo editing software that likes gMail

December 1, 2006 6:26 AM

I'm looking for recommendations on easy to use digital photo editing software for Mac OS X that also plays nice with gMail (or I'm looking for a way for iPhoto and gmail to get along).

My mom recently purchased a digital camera and now wants to E-Mail photos she takes. She's in her 60's and does okay with OS X but likes things to be simple and consistent. She needs to be able to download pictures, crop, rotate, and scale. Sounds like a job for iPhoto? Well, she uses gMail as her mail application, so the software needs to be able to either have a way for her to send through gMail's web interface, or put the photos somewhere easy for her to find (which iPhoto does not seem to do).

I've looked through this thread (Free or Cheap Photo Software) and this thread (iPhoto Alternatives) but didn't find anything to fit the bill. Any new suggestions, OR is there a way for iPhoto to know to e-mail photos through gMail?

posted by jazon to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Does Picassa work for Mac? It is made by google, and it is heavily integrated with Gmail.
posted by BobbyDigital at 6:48 AM on December 1, 2006

If I have a photo that I need to send through gmail, I do this:

+ In iPhoto, I drag the picture to the desktop.
+ In gmail, I attach it to the message, finding the picture attachment on the desktop.
+ Send
+ After the message has sent, I throw the desktop photo away.

To summarize: Put things on the desktop that you need to find quickly.
posted by unixrat at 6:50 AM on December 1, 2006

Do you have POP access enabled for Gmail? If so, you should be able to email the photo directly out of iPhoto using your email client (mail.app, for instance) Works perfectly for me.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:01 AM on December 1, 2006

Seconding Thorzdad. Enable POP access on Gmail, set up mail.app to use her Gmail account.
All she'll then have to do is hit email in iPhoto and then send the message.
posted by cushie at 7:39 AM on December 1, 2006

Stick with iPhoto, and set up POP access in Gmail. If you use it for nothing else but iPhoto, it's worth it.
posted by jeffxl at 7:50 AM on December 1, 2006

This is what you want to do in Mail.app, Then you can just click the button for "email photo" in iPhoto.
posted by shanevsevil at 8:59 AM on December 1, 2006

Thorzdad, cushie, jeffxl, and shanevsevil all have the solution I'm going to implement for my Mom. (I only marked shanevsevil as best as it links to instructions).

And BobbyDigital - picassa doesn't have an OS X version.

Thanks, all!
posted by jazon at 12:57 PM on December 1, 2006

Update a few days later as I just saw this on TUAW. I haven't tested it, but it looks like it'll do what you need:

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/12/07/iphoto2gmail/
posted by devbrain at 6:46 AM on December 8, 2006

Thanks devbrain!
posted by jazon at 7:16 AM on December 8, 2006