Too few pixels

[freepam]

Hello, I'm new here and I'm appreciating the howto articles.
I'm looking for an answer to a problem.
My daughter in law is always sending me photos she wants 'fixed' in some way in Photoshop so she can use them for Xmas cards etc. They rarely have more than 400 pixels - at 72 dpi they are only 3 inches or so. It's pretty hopeless trying to get a good printable shot out of them.
I keep telling her she has to set her camera on a higher quality setting. It's a Canon, 8 or 10 megapixels so she certainly should be getting better shots.
She swears she has it on the highest setting but she couldn't possibly, could she?
We've had a few arguments about it so she's a bit defensive now. Is there anything else she could be doing wrong?
Thanks a lot,
Pam

[Incisive]

Is she sending them via email or putting them up on the web and having you download them? Photos that are uploaded to a site such as flicker are actually 'downsized' to save space and let people with slow connections view them faster.

If she is email'ing them directly, then yes, it should be a full 8MP file.

[OsmosisStudios]

Many e-mail clients (like Microsoft's Outlook) compress images down to totally useless sizes.

[BryanC]

If she is using the highest quality setting, then somewhere between the camera and the file you receive there is some kind of conversion or compression step is being taken. How is she sending the files to you?

[freepam]

It could sometimes be the email problem but I actually checked her whole year's file of pictures and they were mostly that small size to start with - but some not - that's the confusing thing. I put some on a flash drive to bring home with me last time.

I can't figure out how she gets them that small even at the lowest setting.

One thing that occurred to me is that she is using the video setting quite often for the baby and maybe that stays at a low quality afterward. Do you think that's possible?

Thanks for your quick responses.
Pam

[Jim Bryant]

Yup...........that's what is happening.

[BryanC]

The next time you two are together, take it step by step. From taking a picture, to uploading it to the computer, to sending the file by email. This should help in finding where in the process it is happening. (And no arguing...)

[freepam]

Ok, that's what I'll do.
Thanks a lot for your help,
Pam

[smc1377]

I'm betting that her email program is resizing the images. Ask her what program she's using to send emails. Even Yahoo! Mail now resizes automatically so that you're not sending huge jpgs.

[lputman]

Have her use flickr and she can upload them there and you can download them directly.