Lumia 950 doesn't downscale pics for email. Need help with imaging app choice

[macgyverated]

I'm the IT person at a business that has 4 dozen older Windows Phones deployed (920/830/640). I'm currently going through a "testing" phase with myslef and 4 other senior managers having the new Lumia 950.

We like the 950's but noticed an issue that makes it a "no go" for upgrading most of the rest of our staff, and many of them need upgrades.

We are in the construction industry, and for insurance reasons we are required to take numerous photos of our work at jobsites. Currently, our dozen or so field crews take photos, and as they leave each jobsite they email those photos to our dispatcher. All our current Windows Phones will automatically scale down the photos taken to a smaller size for ease of emailing. A typical emailed image file size averages 260KB. Our field crews email in approximately 1400 photos per day to dispatch, with an average of 9 photos per email.

The problem is the new 950, at least with the default camera app, has its lowest MP setting as 8MP, and it does not scale down the images for emailing.
I've tried several times, and individual emailed images are around 6MB. It only takes an email with 2 photos to choke most email servers.

I've tried several and have had no luck, but does anyone know of any third-party camera apps that will allow around 1MP photo settings?

I can't believe MS didn't catch this issue before. This would impact anyone trying to email multiple photos.

Thanks for any help.

 

[InsGadget]

There has to be an app that can downscale for you. Still though, this is one more example where W10M just fails as a mobile OS, unlike WP7 and 8/8.1. MS has a long way to go.

 

[maevinj]

That actually use to bug me that WP would downscale my photos without asking. I actually like that it doesn't downscale my photos. I need to send hi-res to clients, and this saves me the steps of having to copy it off of my phone and then email it from my computer.

 

[daniel_sherlock]

Yeah I too like it now, but for your requirements it's not ideal. They need to fix this to offer a choice.

 

[eddlang]

I think ProShot has the option to change the resolution, but I'm not sure, since I don't have it. The downside is that it's not free.

Another camera app is OneShot. This one is free though. It doesn't have a resolution option but does have three quality options; high, medium and low. I just tried them all for testing by shooting my room.

High: 1.46 MB
Medium: 479 KB
Low: 301 KB

I don't know if it works on the 950. I tried it on my 640 on WP8.1.

Whatever you decide, I think you should send feedback to MS and suggest they add lower resolutions and/or a quality option to the camera app.

 

[Blacklac]

Fhotoroom can downscale images.

But like others, this is a good decision. It's annoying as hell you couldn't get a unaltered image off the device without plugging it in to a computer. Now, there were work around, but... PITA.

Posted via the Note 4/Nexus 7 (2013)/Lumia 1020/Lumia 2520

 

[jpeternel]

I find this incredibly frustrating. I often send photos via email and even photos that I crop down significantly before sending often do NOT go thru. I end up having to either sync the phone or log into OneDrive to get the files. Unfortunately at work I cannot log into OneDrive as it is blocked for security reasons. This is so frustrating I'm tempted to get an Android phone next time.

 

[obakir]

down scaling is such a simple code you'd be surprised. unwarranted down scaling in the email client scaling is not ideal (windows 8.1), but striping it out is not ideal either. I was imagining down scaling would be an option in the next iteration (windows 10). but no. it is as if the decision makes sat down and decided how to make the phone more unstable, less usable.

 

[speccy]

I had this issue too, but that feature was added and automatically enabled for the insider builds quite a while back. It hasn't filtered down to the production builds yet though.

 

[Rosebank]

Can't you use one drive to send the pictures? Upload them then share a link to that folder.

 

[daimv]

OneDrive is a very good option. Give me a minute and I will test proshot app.

 

[daimv]

So I tested it. Proshot also gives minimum of 8mp. I took a picture at 8mp in proshot and in default camera app, at 16x9 aspect ratio. Proshot was 1.7MB, Camera was 2.8 MB though I might have let HDR on without noticing... Anyway, OneDrive is a good option still. You could just upload everything to a onedrive folder with the name of the date or something like that.

 

[daimv]

Also you could take all the pictures and compress them together using something lile the app "extractor for ZIP and RAR" and make a big compressed file with all the pictures for a day, then you upload it to onedrive (or email if it is small enough, but I doubt it if there are lots of pics). That way it will not take as long to send.

 

[Rosebank]

Pictures don't compress well, nice idea though. A typical jpeg might shave off one or two kilobytes, yes one or two kilobytes. Jpegs are already compressed format.

 

[speccy]

Pictures don't compress well, nice idea though. A typical jpeg might shave off one or two kilobytes, yes one or two kilobytes. Jpegs are already compressed format.

It's not so much that they are compressed, they are also resized as well. Typical photos taken on my L950 are shrunk to about 200k when sending via Outlook, the actual photo/file on the phone is many MB larger.

 

[Rosebank]

Yes when sending via outlook the parameters of the photo are changed, what I mean is a typical jpeg can't be compressed using compression software, win rar/zip etc, Jpegs are already a compressed image format with very little ability to compress. Outlook achieves this by totally downscaling the image to practically a thumbnail.

 

[daimv]

Hello.
Hey I just discovered Outlook DOES rescale images if you want to. The thing is, when you add images, you have to add them within the body of the email, using "Insert -> Image " to add them. And then if you click it you can choose 3 options for size (small, fit (fits the size you choose graphically), and original). I tested it sending myself an email with a pic I took with the camera at 19 MP. I chose "small", and I got a tiny image that used almost no space. So it works. Just don't add them as a normal attachment.

(So I guess this is what was already implemented on insider builds, but now we know it is already present in the production builds too)

 

[daimv]

I find this incredibly frustrating. I often send photos via email and even photos that I crop down significantly before sending often do NOT go thru. I end up having to either sync the phone or log into OneDrive to get the files. Unfortunately at work I cannot log into OneDrive as it is blocked for security reasons. This is so frustrating I'm tempted to get an Android phone next time.

See my previous post.
Lots of times the frustration can be tamed with a little searching around.

 

[Rosebank]

Does outlook email not have a size limit for sending? Thought it was 25mb, possibly 50mb, that's not alot of images at 19mb, what's the size of the email if you select small as option?

 

[daimv]

Does outlook email not have a size limit for sending? Thought it was 25mb, possibly 50mb, that's not alot of images at 19mb, what's the size of the email if you select small as option?

The original image was 19 megapixels (so really big), which was around 6MB I think. But when I added it as "image" and selected small, the image resized to 166x222 pixels, and around 6KB. So it became VERY, VERY small. Like REALLY small LOL. But I'm sure you can make them a bit bigger so that you can see them better without needing the full 19 MP and thus still gaining a lot of space.