Two Quick Ways To Edit Email Images (1 for Mac, 1 for PC)

Inserting images into emails requires, in almost all cases, that the images satisfy some sort of limitation on their width and height. Especially the width! Sometimes you'll have an email template which requires that they are a specific number of pixels wide, or perhaps a maximum number of pixels. Even without restrictions, say when you are just creating an email message from scratch, we typically don't want to have the message be too wide. After all people will be viewing email in a number of formats... a web browser, an iphone, various email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.

One way to increase the odds that as many people as possible view the message correctly is to have compact, reasonably sized images in your emails, and to control those sizes yourself! Don't leave it to chance, like leaving it to the user's application.

So you may need to resize and/or crop your images before composing your emails. In some cases a simple resize will be all you need, but maybe you have a big image from your camera, that, instead of or in addition to resizing, you want to crop. (Cropping means using only part of the image). Here's how to Resize and Crop for two platforms: 1) Mac, 2) PC.

FOR THE MAC
Modern Macs (OS X) come with Preview.

If you're a regular Mac user, you know this application. It's the default app for opening up PDF files, and many image formats like JPEG. But Preview can also be used for editing images. So open up your image in Preview.

Customize your toolbar to show the editing tools.

You'll want to have at least the Crop and Select buttons added. (Resize is not an element on the toolbar, but the menu.)

To crop, hit Select, and then make your rectangle of your chosen size and placement. Then hit Crop!

To resize, go to Tools->Adjust Size. Select the dimensions you want. You can do this for the original image or a cropped image. Also, you can keep the ratio of the dimensions of your original image ("Scale proportionally" - almost always the best option), or change them so there's a "stretch" to one of the sides. The lock linking the width and height reflects the "Scale proportionally" checkbox.

You can choose to Resample the image or not... a lower sample reflects a lower filesize, which is preferred until it gets to the point where the image doesn't look good anymore. Space is limited with Cooler Email, but we don't want you to sacrifice quality.

Remember to "Save As..." if you want the new image to be a separate file, and simply to "Save" the file if you want to replace the original.

FOR THE PC
For the PC I use a software program called Faststone Image Viewer, which is free (but you can donate if you like!). Tim Tringali of the South Florida chapter first introduced me to this. Download it at http://www.faststone.org.

Faststone is great for navigating thru images on your PC. Once you find the one you want to edit, a double click on it opens it up in full screen mode; then a right click on the image brings up the menu which will lead to "Edit", which leads to the features we're talking about here.

To crop, choose "Crop Board".

You can immediately save this cropped image to a file via the "Lossless Crop To File" button, or, if you want to pull this temporary image into another application, "Crop To Clipboard".

To resize, choose "Resize/Resample".

In almost all cases, you'll want to keep the "Preserve Aspect Ratio" checkbox selected; otherwise you'll get a stretch on one side of the pic that will look unnatural (for real photos).

Remember to "Save As..." if you want the new image to be a separate file, and simply to "Save" the file if you want to replace the original.

How To Export Lists From Cooler Email

For many chapters, your main Cooler Email list may have been derived simply by importing your latest membership list from Chapternet. But if you have a webform tied to that list, or if chapter volunteers have been manually adding to it, there will be more contacts than are in the Surfrider National database, and you may very well want to export or download that list (or lists) from Cooler Email. Here's how to do it.

The basic steps, which will be expanded upon below, are:

1. Login to Cooler Email.
2. Figure out which list you want to export (your chapter may very well have only one list).
3. Click "Contacts".
4. Click "Export".
5. In the "Email List Export Manager", (de-)select the fields you do and don't want to grab.
6. Click "Export Now".
7. Save your file.

Pretty simple! The only real stumbling block is that the Email List Export Manager defaults, somewhat haphazardly, to selecting a whole lot of fields that the vast majority of us do not need, the vast majority of the time.

1. Login to Cooler Email.
If you don't have a Cooler Email login, contact Katz.

2. Figure out which list you want to export (there may very well be only one list).
3. Click "Contacts".

4. Click "Export".

5. In the "Email List Export Manager", (de-)select the fields you do and don't want to grab.
Don't ask me what logic went into the decision to default certain fields here as checked! This wouldn't be a big issue except that if you only want some of these fields, there's no way to de-select all of them in one shot. You have to manually go thru and de-click (or click) the ones you don't (or do) want to export in your file.

Something else to keep in mind: several of these fields will likely have blank, or even incorrect data. Things like "SpouseFirst" and "Industries" are rarely used.

I would also de-check "Include Stats" if you are using this for anything other than specifically seeing how your email blasts have been doing. In the case where you really do want to see that, A-OK, but if not, it's a lot of clutter.

(Note: on Windows, I believe you can de-check these lists without using your mouse/trackpad by using the tab keys and spacebar keys).

6. Click "Export Now".
7. Save your file.

That's it! The only thing to say about Saving the File is that it's a pretty fast download in many cases and depending on your browser configuration, you may not even know that it's worked... you may suspect it is not working at all! Check your desktop... there may be a new file there. You can open this file in a spreadsheet application (or a text editor).

Sending Email That Appears To Come From Surfrider.org

» View updated information about the Surfrider.org email service here

Perhaps you have sent a Surfrider related email message from your personal email account, and wished that instead of it coming through to the recipient(s) as mehere@yahoo.com, or brian@gmail.com, etc., it came through as mychapter@surfrider.org. That is, you want it to come into the recipient's inbox as if it came not just from you, but from your Surfrider chapter. This is good for style points, and it's practical, as it increases the odds that your email will be read.

Prior to anything:
1) Make sure you have a working surfrider.org email address for your chapter.
(If your chapter does not have an email address, contact your regional coordinator to initiate setup.)
2) Your email may have one or more aliases. Always use the main, primary one for any configurations, setups, and/or logins.
(Not sure which is the primary? Ask your regional coord or SF tech assistance).

There's a different way to setup sending which depends on how you access your email: 1. via webmail, 2. via your own email client/service, or 3. as a forwarding address.

1. Via Surfrider.org Webmail.
The Surfrider Webmail URL is http://mail.surfrider.org. It operates just like any web-based email client, like Gmail or Yahoo. When you use webmail, you need not do any other setup. You are essentially operating on the Surfrider Foundation mail server, so emails you send from here actually are coming from surfrider.org. No additional configuration is neccessary.



2. Via Your Own Email Client/Service
» View setup instructions for various clients/services
BUG ALERT! If you ever receive "doubles" of your SF emails, it may be because you are accessing your surfrider.org email directly AND as a forward. Contact SF tech assistance to fix this behavior.

Once you setup your client/service (ex. Outlook, Gmail.com, etc.) to receive (and send) email via surfrider.org, you only need to make sure that when you send out emails related to Surfrider, you choose the specific surfrider.org account you just setup. You do this slightly differently in different clients and services.

Here's an example using gmail. Gmail has a modifiable "From: " field when you send. So you just need to set up the Surfrider.org account, and then switch as neccessary before hitting "Send".


In gmail, setup is in "Settings::Accounts::Send Mail As".


3. As A Forwarding Address

In the case where you receive your surfider.org emails at a separate, different email account, a reply-to address is the best option. In account setup, set your chapter@surfrider.org address as the reply-to.

Reply-tos are like sending an actual package from your house but putting a different address on the return-to label. Except that in the digital world, clients and spam filters can tell that the different address is not authentic, and may misinterpret that as mailicious.. which is why this method is the least preferable.







That's it!