Email lots of photos at full quality

How SendTheStuff will send a batch of photos by email

SendTheStuff will keep the photos out of the email itself, so the attachment cap won't matter. Here's what that will mean for a camera roll's worth of pictures:

• One link for the whole batch. SendTheStuff will take up to 1,000 files in one transfer, so a whole trip or event fits in a single email.
• Photos at full size. SendTheStuff won't shrink or re-save them, so the person you send them to will get them at full resolution.
• Any email app. SendTheStuff will hand you the link with Copy, Email, Messages and Share buttons. Or SendTheStuff will email it to up to 10 people for you.
• Free room for big batches. SendTheStuff will send up to 5 GB per transfer. The free plan will allow 10 transfers or 20 GB in a rolling 30 days, whichever comes first.
• Nothing left in your storage. SendTheStuff will keep the link working for 14 days, then delete the photos. Your Google and iCloud space won't be touched.

Why a batch of photos won't fit in one email

Every inbox caps the size of a single email, and photos add up quickly. Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail all stop at 25 MB. Gmail measures the total attachment size, so twenty photos that add up past the cap get the same treatment as one big file.

Say each photo from your phone is about 4 MB. Then six photos already fill a Gmail message. A weekend away with 200 photos would take about 34 emails, sent and opened one by one.

Two quieter things make it worse:

• Attachments grow in transit. Email carries files as text, which makes them about 33 percent larger on the way. A batch that only just fits can still bounce at the other end.
• Newer phone cameras save bigger files. More megapixels mean each photo can take more of the cap than an older phone's did.

What your email app does to big photos

Each app has its own way of dealing with photos that are too big. Some refuse them, some swap in a link, and some quietly shrink them.

• Gmail takes up to 25 MB of attachments on a personal account. Past that, it removes them and inserts a Google Drive link, which counts against your Google storage.
• Outlook for iPhone and Android offers to compress or resize any attached image larger than 1MB. Accept, and the recipient gets a smaller copy, not your original.
• Outlook.com lets you drag a photo smaller in the message, but Microsoft is clear: "Resizing an image doesn't reduce its file size."
• Mail on Mac inserts photos at their actual size by default. A pop-up menu on the right of the message header can switch to a smaller size, so check it before you send.
• Mail on iPhone notices when the photos are over your provider's limit. Apple says to follow the onscreen instructions to send it using Mail Drop.

There's a format catch on iPhones too. An iPhone set to High Efficiency saves photos as HEIF. Sent to a device that can't open them, Apple says they might be converted to a more compatible format, such as JPEG.

Does zipping the photos make them small enough?

No. Photos are already compressed when your camera saves them, so a zip has almost nothing left to squeeze. Microsoft says a zipped folder of JPEG pictures comes out about the same as the original collection of pictures.

That was easy to test for this guide. 25 JPEG photos (Windows' own wallpaper photos), 37.8 MB in all, were zipped with standard Deflate compression at its default level. The zip came out at 37.1 MB, just 1.8% smaller. The best single photo shrank by 8%.

So zipping is for bundling, not shrinking. It turns a folder of photos into one file to attach, but that file is still too big for an email if the photos were.

Every route for a batch of photos, side by side

Why the usual workarounds fall short

Each of the routes above gets photos through, but each costs you something:

• Several emails keep the photos intact, but the recipient has to open each one and save every photo by hand.
• Mail Drop is Apple's feature. It needs you to be signed in to your Apple Account, and its link expires after 30 days.
• A Gmail Drive link and a Google Photos link use your Google storage, 15 GB free and shared across Drive, Photos, and Gmail. A big album can fill it.
• An iCloud link needs iCloud Photos turned on, and Apple documents it for iOS 26.
• A shared album made on iOS 26 or earlier shrinks each photo to 2048 pixels on the long edge, so it's not full quality.

Until SendTheStuff launches

Pick the route that matches where your photos are.

From an iPhone, with Mail Drop:

1. In Photos, tap Select, then tap the photos. To take a whole album, use Select All.
2. Tap Share, then Mail, and address the email.
3. When the photos are too big, Apple says to follow the onscreen instructions to send it using Mail Drop. The recipient gets a download link for 30 days.

From an iPhone, as an iCloud link (iOS 26):

1. Select the photos in Photos and tap Share, then Options.
2. Turn on iCloud Link, then share to Mail. You need iCloud Photos turned on.

From the Google Photos app on iPhone:

1. Select the photos, tap Share, then Get link.
2. Paste the link into your email. Google says people can view them even if they don't use the Google Photos app.

From a computer, with Gmail: attach the photos as usual. Past 25 MB, Gmail swaps in a Google Drive link by itself. When it asks about sharing, pick "Anyone with the link" so everyone you email can open them.

What the person you email gets

Attached photos sit in their inbox, ready to save one at a time. A link instead opens a page where they view or download the batch, which is easier with dozens of pictures.

Your photos carry more than pixels. Apple says a shared photo includes its date and time, location, device, and captions. Before sharing from an iPhone on iOS 26, you can turn off Location under Share > Options to leave out where they were taken.

A SendTheStuff link will open a download page listing each photo with its size and the date the link expires. They'll download the files exactly as you uploaded them, with no app to install.

When it doesn't work

• The photos arrived small or blurry. Something resized them on the way. Check the size menu in Mail on Mac, refuse Outlook's offer to resize, and avoid old shared albums for full-quality copies.
• The recipient can't open a .HEIC file. Share with Most Compatible under Share > Options, and the photos may be converted to JPEG. For future photos, set Settings > Camera > Formats to Most Compatible.
• Gmail says "Couldn't send message". The photos didn't finish uploading to Drive, for example because your storage is full or the connection is slow. Clear some space, or send fewer photos per email.
• The email bounced with "Your message exceeded Google's message size limits." The message was too big for the recipient's Gmail. Send a link instead, or split the batch.
• Mail Drop stopped sending. It stops at its 1 TB storage limit until older attachments expire. It also stops when too many messages have been sent or the maximum number of recipients has been exceeded.