DennisD

Hi Folks,
So I am fooling around with some star photography and getting some nice results following the suggestions of some terrific nighttime
photographers, both pro. The star shots look good on my camera monitor. They look good on my iMac desktop. However, when I shift the star photo into an email, as an attachment, the stars are barely visible. In my Photo of the Week (weekly photo and short essay via email), all other shots go out looking just fine. As I shot them. But these new, 15-20 second exposure star-scapes just don't have
the pop. The juice. The punch. You get the point. The landscape in the shots look fine. The foreground trees look fine. But the stars themselves are losing most of their light. Sometimes barely noticeable. I am wondering if this is because of the low-resolution of the email photos, usually reduced from 12-18 MB raw or jpeg files to kilobyte files, which all my other shots end up being reduced to, automatically, in my "photos" program on the Mac.
Any suggestions, explanations, solutions would be very welcome at this time, as I would love to get otherwise pretty cool shots into an
email format so my cyber-recipients can enjoy them also. Thank you very much for any and all help. Much appreciated.
Dennis D / Stevensville, Montana

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

Dennis, I’d recommend you consider opening a free DropBox account. It may well be it will provide additional functionality for your group than just the sharing of full resolution images. DropBox.com

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

There's a size limitation for email attachments, which may involve serious compression, loosing the detail you know is there.

DennisD

Thank you for that information. I appreciate your taking the time to weigh in.

DennisD

Thanks, Bruce.

Cheese

Could be a limitation of the Mac OS. I use gmail with Windows, and it does not reduce file size when sending photos. I assume you are sending the photos as attachments, and not embedding them in your text.

DennisD

Right. As attachments. Mac OS does reduce photo file size automatically, from say 8-18 MB to 300-400 KB, in order for the group on the other end to be able to open the email and access the photo. I understand that photos sent in an email cannot be original/full
size and have most people be able to access them. I do have the option to send them full-size, but almost never do, and all other photos that I have sent via email (not containing stars) are fine. There is something unique about the stars.
Small, low-resolution shots suitable for email exchanges are sent a billion times a day. When I send a photo at full-resolution, maximum file size, to a printer for printing purposes, which is what the printer requires, they go through fine and result in great prints. But you cannot expect folks with smart phones to import that size file for an email photo, almost all of which are in KBs.
More to think about and I will check in with Apple and see what they say. Thanks very much for the response, Cheese Man. And, for the record, I like pepper jack the best.
D. Diehl / Stevensville, Montana