Please Release Me!

... since you wish to curry favor with them.

An example, in today's e-mail, was a brief little item on a local credit union manager's training. No problem, some minor grammar issues, but nothing major.

Accompanied by a nice color mugshot of the manager. Great, fine, wonderful.

A seven-megabyte mugshot. NOT so wonderful.

If you're going to send a photo with an e-mail press release, please remember to compress the file down to a manageable size. (I could examine up close, every skin imperfection of this woman's face, so we're definitely talking too big a file here.)

I'd say that any photo over a half-megabyte in size should not be e-mailed, as a rule. If someone needs a high-resolution photo, they can request it. But even the finest magazines or newspapers do not need a 7MB file for a photo that will typically run an inch or two deep.

One option: Make the photo available upon request. Another is to include a link to a page on a Website that has it, for those who want it.

But please DON'T assume everyone will want a photo, especially such a big one. Odds are, they don't.