How To Email Photos From Lightroom Classic

I’ve noticed that some of you are finding it difficult to email photos with the correct sizes for competitions, so I thought it would be useful to show you how to do it in Lightroom Classic. The benefit of using Lightroom Classic is that it gives you complete control over the file size and JPEG quality. Plus it’s easy to use once you’ve set it up.

Getting the file size and quality is important if you’re sending photos to websites or magazines for publication, because any photos that aren’t the right size will get rejected. It also matters if you’re sending photos to be printed, as smaller photos won’t print as well as full-size ones. 

As a general tip, emailing photos from a computer gives you more control over file size and quality than sending from a phone or tablet, as your device’s app may automatically downsize your photos.

How to email a photo from Lightroom Classic

Let’s start by looking at how you can email a photo from Lightroom Classic using its built-in email tool.

Method 1: Use your computer’s default email application

This is the easiest way to send an email from Lightroom Classic as it preps the photo and attaches it to an email ready for you to send.

1. Go to Grid View in the Library module and select the photo / photos you want to email. 

2. Go to File > Email Photo to open the email dialog. 

3. Go to the From menu and select your email application (Apple Mail in my case). You can fill in the To and Subject fields in this window, but it’s not compulsory as you can also do it in your email application.

Note: Lightroom Classic supports most email applications on Windows PCs, but fewer on a Mac (Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Entourage and Eudora).

4. Go to the Preset menu. You can select a size from the menu, but with the exception of the Full Size preset they’re unlikely to match what you need. If that applies to you select the Create New Preset option, which opens the Export dialog.

5. Set the Export menu at the top of the window to Email. Go to File Settings and, unless you have a good reason to do otherwise, set Quality to 100. Then go to Image Sizing and set the required dimensions.

6. Click the Add button if you want to create an Export Preset so you can use the same settings again.

7. Click the Export button to send the photo to return to the email dialog. Click the Send button to open your email client with an email ready to send.

Note: Check your email application’s settings to make sure that it’s not compressing or reducing the size of any attached photos. For example, in Apple Mail, make sure Image Size is set to Actual Size, not one of the other menu options.

Method 2: Use Lightroom Classic to email a photo

The second method uses Lightroom Classic’s built-in email tool to send your photo/s. You’ll find this method useful if you don’t have an email application set up on your computer, or it’s compressing photos and you can’t figure out why.

If you don’t use one of the supported email clients (Gmail, AOL, Windows Live or Yahoo! Mail) you’ll need to know your email client’s SMTP settings to get it to work. Your email client should be able to help you with this if you don’t know where to find the information.

If you’re a Gmail user there might be issues with authentication as Google automatically blocks third party apps from accessing your email account (see below for the fix). 

1. Go to Grid View in the Library module and select the photo / photos you want to email. 

2. Go to File > Email Photo to open the email dialog. 

3. If you don’t have an email address set up already go to the From menu and  select Go to Email Account Manager. Click the Add button to set up your email address. 

4. Give your account a name to help you identify it (your email address works well), select your service provider and click OK.

5. Enter your email address again on the next page along with your password. If it’s a supported service Lightroom Classic automatically applies the appropriate Outgoing Server Settings. 

6. Click the Validate button to prompt Lightroom Classic to contact your email provider’s servers and validate your details. This may not work if you use Gmail, but you can follow the instructions here to set up an app password and validate your email address.

7. Click the Done button to return to the email dialog. Enter the email address you want to send the photo to, a subject and a message. Select a preset (or change the picture size and quality settings using the steps outlined above) and click the Send button to send the email on its way.

Test your email settings

Before sending your photos to somebody important you can test it out by sending a photo to your own email address. That way you can download the photo and check that it’s still the same size that you sent it. If it isn’t, check your email application’s settings and turn off any image compression. A Google search will help if you get stuck.

Sending photos in bulk by email

These methods are best for sending a handful of photos (less than 10). You can send up to 100 photos with an email from Lightroom Classic, but in practice you don’t want to do that as you’ll exceed the attachment size limit of your email provider. 

If you want to send more photos, the easiest way is to export them to a folder on your computer and then send them using wetransfer.com, a free file transfer service that doesn’t compress your photos.