When you want to send some photos to friends as email attachments, you don't need to send the original multimegabyte sized photo files. They clog up people's email. Many of us have quotas we have to respect. Also uploading a large number of photos to Facebook is much quicker if you already have reduced the file size by this method.
You can easily reduce photos by large factors to at most a few hundred K JPG files without loss of resolution for viewing on screen. If you want to send one special photo that the recipient will print out on photo paper, then maybe you can send a large file, but otherwise you are just revealing your lack of knowledge of this photo size problem.
For a windows machine, you should have the Microsoft Office Picture Manager. To use it just follow these steps.
1) Right click on the first JPG photo file in windows explorer or my computer or my pictures or whatever your access point is, and
2) Choose OPEN WITH, and then MS Office Picture Manager. If you have multiple photos to reduce, then pick VIEW, Filmstrip. You can then use your mouse to SHIFT CLICK on the right most picture in the horizontal list to select all the intermediate photos.
3) Then choose File Menu, Export.
On the right column, uncheck the folder name and choose a new folder name for
the smaller files (I add"-small" to the folder name because I do this will all
my photos, it is already created before entering).
choose Export using this size: Large Document (1024x768pxls).
Uncheck Export with original names, and then click on Rename Files.
Uncheck automatic file numbering.
Click on Rename Pictures, Follow existing file name, then type into the window
"-small" to append this string to the original filenames.
Finally click on Return to Export.
Then click on OK.
The files will then be exported to the new folder with the new size and the
appended filenames.
If you have a MAC, you should be able to do this even easier because MACS are
more user friendly. I don't have one so I cannot offer advice to you.
I have a 12.1 MPxl Canon SD980 IS point and shoot that averages about 5MB a
photo, and my Large Document sized reduced files are about 300K, and I can zoom
in on the smaller files and still see fine detail. Now I use my wife's much
cheaper even smaller and more powerful Samsung 5x zoom, 14.2 MPxl camera,
purchased without any background check during an impulse buy at Costco based on
the small size to fit in her pocketbook.
The latest version of MS Office does not have MS Office picture manager any more, what to do?
http://www.askvg.com/how-to-install-and-get-microsoft-office-picture-manager-back-in-office-2013/
Here is the solution.
Some people use Photoscape.