Filed under: iLife, Multimedia, Software, Cool tools, Hacks, Internet Tools
iPhoto2Gmail
You know that handy feature in iPhoto where you click the Email button and it launches your default email client and attaches a perfectly-sized pic for you to share with whomever you wish? If you use Mail.app or Entourage or Eudora or even AOL that feature works great. But what if you use Gmail as your default email client? You're out of luck... Until now! Juan Leon has whipped up an iPhoto plugin that lets you use Gmail to send photos directly from iPhoto.
Once installed you'll use the Export menu dialog to access it. The only catch, and hopefully this will change further along in the development process, is you lose the spiffy resizing options that the built-in iPhoto Email handler uses. Instead, if your pic is already smaller than 800x600, you just send it "full size." If it's larger than 800x600, then select the "Send Scaled" option and it will shrink it to 800x600, which is generally small enough for you to send to most people.
iPhoto2Gmail works with iPhoto 5 and iPhoto 6 and it's Universal Binary. It's also donationware, so if you use it, consider tipping the developer.
Juan says "I used this as an excuse to get my feet wet with Cocoa and all the neat new Xcode features.This is the result... so far. It is still a very early piece of software, probably has many bugs, and is rough around the edges. I hope to improve on it and that it will be useful to some folks."
I tested it. It works as expected. Makes my life easier. I don't ask for much more than that.
[via Hawk Wings]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ed said 5:09PM on 12-07-2006
wow - excellent. i have been needing this for ages. thank you
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Perry said 5:14PM on 12-07-2006
Just what i have been missing!
Thanks Juan Leo!!!
It save's me a lot of time.
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Chad said 5:45PM on 12-07-2006
I've just set up a gmail box in mail.app. When I click e-mail in iPhoto I can select which mailbox I want to use. This has been my default way of life since switching to a mac. I haven't had any problems. What does this plug-in do better?
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Chad said 5:47PM on 12-07-2006
I've just set up a gmail box in mail.app. When I click e-mail in iPhoto I can select which mailbox I want to use. This has been my default way of life since switching to a mac. I haven't had any problems. What does this plug-in do better?
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Laurie said 5:49PM on 12-07-2006
@ Chad - what it does "better" is that it doesn't make you use or setup Mail.app or any other local email client at all, which is the way many people prefer it. Some people use webmail and webmail only. Your way is fine for you. But others may have different needs :)
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Tom said 6:01PM on 12-07-2006
If you use Mail.app or Entourage or Eudora or even AOL that feature works great. But what if you use Gmail....
Just use Mail, works great
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John Russell said 6:03PM on 12-07-2006
This looks like a cool app, but I prefer to use mail.app for my gmail account
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greg said 8:10PM on 12-07-2006
If only someone decided that such an iPhoto plugin for imageshack (or other free image hosting service with a remote api) was just as useful ... haaaa!
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Mark Brooks said 3:51AM on 12-08-2006
I have no issues exporting photos from iPhoto to my Mail's GMail account. I don't understand why this is an issue.
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PalmerDeville said 11:10AM on 12-08-2006
What I'd like to see is a program that allows me to click the browse button on a photo sharing website and in the "File Upload" window have the option of switching to a mini iPhoto view to choose a photo and then select a resolution for the upload. Is there already a feature for this that I'm missing? Right now I have to go to iPhoto and send to email, then drag that email photo to the desktop for uploading to a website.
Is there a better way?
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jennie said 5:30AM on 12-08-2006
Nice tip! What about the picture of the kid with the mouse as a cell phone? Is it available in Flickr? Thanx
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Adam Keck said 11:15AM on 12-08-2006
You can do this with only Mail.app. Just set up a dummy account with the smtp information filled in according to Gmail's pop3 instructions, but use a bogus pop3 server name. Mail.app will then happily send mail out with your gmail return address through Google's smtp server.
-Adam
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Charles said 5:22PM on 12-08-2006
Exactly as people have pointed out. If you've got iPhoto, you must be running on a machine where you're at least able to run Mail. In which case just set up Gmail to do SMTP.
Talk about not RTFM..
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cvander said 5:41PM on 12-08-2006
I was looking for something like this for a while now.. Great tool.
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Veronica said 7:44AM on 12-09-2006
Fantastic, exceptional, what a brain, thank you so much!
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Gonzalo said 12:32PM on 12-09-2006
Weeena primo!! jajaja...excelente iniciativa, aunque no soy un usuario de toda esta tecnología q estas desarrollando, mis felicitaciones. no se ve todos los días...más bien, NUNK! ajajaj Un abrazo...
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Juan said 11:13PM on 12-15-2006
Hey guys, just saw that my plugin got some "linkage"! I am glad some folks have found it useful. As many have noted, it is certainly possible to use Mail.app to send through Gmail, however I wanted to require as few setup steps as possible for my less mac-savvy friends and family.
Anyway, I'll try to add some content to the website to keep track of known issues and new versions. Thanks again for the positive feedback. Makes the hard work worth it.
Juan
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Sirish said 6:32PM on 12-31-2006
An exceptional program for people who don't want to use the Mail.app and keep it simple yet still use gmail. Been looking for it for a long time and glad to know it is here. Thanks for all the hard work!
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