Client Toolkit

Sending Large Files On the Internet

We often need to send and receive large files over the internet. Clients need to send us images, we need to send files to printers, etc. In the marketing business, these files are often high resolution, and have to be fairly large. Unfortunately, most email providers will only handle images up to 10MB, and some handle only 5MB, or 2MB. These limits are set because the email protocol wasn’t designed for reliably sending large files. And even if your email can send 10MB files, your recipient may only be able to receive 2MB files. So what do you do?

Here are a few tips on handling large files/attachments:

1) Whenever you can, downsize the image or file size.

Design comps or images being sent only for review do not have to be high resolution (240dpi or more). A great resolution for viewing files on screen is 72dpi. The smaller the dpi, the smaller the file and therefore easier to send by email.

a) Resize photos on a Windows PC using IrfanView (Freeware, download here. Thanks to a blog post from Expansion Plus for this tip).
Resize photos on the Mac using Preview (Use “Save As”, choose Format “JPEG” and then slide the “Quality” slider to the lower end).

b) Compress files into a ZIP file before sending. This is also a great way to group several small files together into one. WinZip is a popular software for Windows PC (download trial version here). On the Mac, click on the file in the Finder window, select “File” and “Create Archive…”

By the way, resize images BEFORE you drop them into Word or PowerPoint. Even if you size the image to be smaller inside the document, the embedded file keeps the larger data-size, resulting in a much larger document file.

2) Use an internet-hosted file storage plan.

Here are a few recommended by PC Magazine:

• Xdrive (www.xdrive.com)
• Yahoo! Briefcase (http://briefcase.yahoo.com)
• Iomega WhaleMail (www.iomega.com/istorage)
• MagicVortex (http://magicvortex.com)

Some are free or have a free trial period. Mac users can also use a .mac account.

3) Use an FTP site.

This is probably the most common method for printers, publications, etc. If you have a website already, your web master can set this up easily and it doesn’t cost the company anything extra. However, some companies have one ftp site for all their clients, and you can easily download someone else’s files when you get to that site.

Smith Asbury sets up a unique ftp / file download page for each client project and deletes the files after a certain amount of time. We’ll email the link and access info to the client so only they can access it.

4) Copy files onto a CD or DVD and mail by snail mail.

Ok, this method won’t send the files in the next hour or so (unless the recipient lives across the street!), but it’s worth mentioning because we still use this method every now and then. One advantage is that the recipient doesn’t have to spend a long time on the internet to download the files. Sometimes, this is simply an easier method to use.