iPhone 101: How to Email a Photo from Your iPhone
Welcome to iPhone 101, our help and how-to series for brand new and beginner iPhone users. If you’re moving up from a feature phone, you may be surprised to discover one feature the iPhone is missing: MMS. Whether it’s still coming, inexplicably omitted, or a callous way to force users into platform and device independent protocols, currently the only way to send a photo from your iPhone is via good old Email. After the break, we’ll show you how!
To send a photo, you need to be in either the Photo application or the Camera Roll inside the Camera application.
If you’re in the Photo app, first choose the album that contains your photo. If you’re in the Camera Roll, you’re already good to go.
Either tap the photo you want to send, or swipe sideway to browse through the album and find it. Once you have your photo, if you don’t see the menu bar already, tap the screen once to bring it up. On the bottom left, tap the Send Photo icon to slide up your options.
Choose the Email Photo. (If you have MobileMe, you’ll see you can also send your Photo directly to your web gallery — more on that in a future post).
Your photo will shrink a bit and a blank email message will slide up behind it.
Tap on the To: field and start typing to bring up email addresses from your contacts. As as many as you like. You can also tap on the CC/BCC field to copy additional contacts or add blind copies, and to change your Sent From: address if you have more than one email account set up on your iPhone.
Tap Subject to give your email a title, and tap above the photo in the body of the email to add any descriptions or messages you want to go along with your Photo.
When you’re happy with your email, hit Send and presto! your email is on its way.
Note: Presently you can only send one photo via email at a time, so you’ll have to wait until it finishes sending the email to repeat the process (how long this takes depends on the speed of your connection: fast for WiFi, fast-ish for 3G/HSPA, and slooooow for 2G/EDGE). The email option will be ghosted out while your iPhone is busy, so if you see it available, you’ll know you’re good to go to send the next Photo.
Let us know how it works for you, and if have any extra tips for new users, please drop them in the comments!
January 9th, 2009 at 11:06 am
I advise everyone to get the mms app in the app store. You have to pay 30p (50-odd cents) per mms, but it does let you receive them into a nice and neat inbox.
A must have app.
Pity that the iPhone cant send/receive mms’s as standard.
January 9th, 2009 at 11:13 am
@Daniel – I’m guessing you are out of the USA?
January 9th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
yes…..is that app really not available in the US???
January 9th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
@daniel:
I believe Apple foresees MMS as they once foresaw the floppy drive; soon dead (just my belief).
January 9th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
maybe Steve, but 99% of the phone in the world are not iPhone’s, and a huge percentage of them use MMS. MMS may be on its way out, but not for a good while then, and by the time its gone, we will probably be on an iPhone 4G!!
You think the apple also think that cut and paste is on its way out?!?! together with video recording?? HaHa. Thank god for jailbreaking!!
January 9th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
@daniel: 99% of vehicles were once pulled by horses. Things can change very quickly, and there are always going to be those who don’t like it.
January 9th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
MMS-ing is going no-where for a while
January 9th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Yeah, no mms app here is the states unless you jailbreak.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Yeah, no mms app here in the states unless you jailbreak.
January 9th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
No one is talking about going around mms. I’ve been asking my friends to send me a text through thief mms to my email. That way I can get their phones email address (example soandsonmbr@vzwtext.com). It’s a pain but now I can send photos to other phones and vice versa. . . now if only I could figure away around fowarding SMS…
January 10th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
I’m like THIS close to deleting you from my feed reader. Please stop with the 101 articles. Seriously, this is crazy. The iPhone is the most intuitive phone ever, you don’t have to write stories like these.
What articles are next… “How To Turn On Your iPhone” “How To Find The Internet On Your iPhone (Hint: Safari = Internet)”
January 10th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
To Steve2
If you did not know, they are link building I assume. They must know a little about SEOing. It sounds annoying to you but ranks there site higher with each BS article. Thats why they post more articles than iphonehacks.com, modmyi.com, etc.
TheIphoneBlog.com has more articles posted than everyone. Some are very stupid though.
January 11th, 2009 at 1:09 am
still amazed at some people that read this and say “wow thats how you send a pic”
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
For info of Nick and those above – If your advanced users of the iphone, then clearly your too good to be reading this site! Seriously, look at what the article says above. it’s aimed at “new users”!! Chill out!!! Some people may have just purchased the iphone and need a little direction. Ok, we know what to do – Great, some people don’t. Remember, the iphone does not come with a user guide or manual. Yes, accepted, the phone is supposed to be intuitive, but not everyone has an honours degree in I.T! If you think some of the guides are too basic, move on to articles that are slightly more advanced. A good website (which this is) caters for the wider audience…..
January 24th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln or maybe Mark Twain who said, “When you argue with a fool, make sure he’s not similarly engaged.” I really appreciate iphone 101. Thank you.
January 30th, 2009 at 7:48 am
I have one of the first i phone’s that were sold i have problems sending a photo from my phone not only that can any i phone forward on a text message that has been received from someone and want to forward the same message to another address
February 14th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Can you transfer all the pics in your photos box on your iphone to your computer at one time?
March 16th, 2009 at 5:45 am
I recently forwarded 4 separate photos and each time was told it couldn’t be delivered. I then tried to resend 2 of those. As it turned out, not only were they sent but the receiver received over 30 of them. Any ideas?
July 19th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I have done all of the above to email my photo and it says I have 4 ( the number I tried to send) are not sent
What can I do to get them to send?
my iphone is the 3G S
Thanks.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:25 am
Is there a way to email a picture without it freaking shrinking?
August 6th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
When I used to email photos with my iPhone it would include a .jpg attachment of the picture which could be saved by the receiver. Now my iPhone just inserts the picture and there is no way to save or save-as for for the receiver. What happend? How do I include the attachment?
August 10th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Cannot send photo by email as the phone informs “Please set up a Mail account in order to email photos” Although a mail account has been set up.
Any one can help??
August 11th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I followed these instructions explicitly and I receive an email with the appropriate subject line but no photo. Nothing in the body. No attachment.
Help would be appreciated.
August 12th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Everything works fine on sending a pic from iphone to email address–then a screen pops up that says: cannot send mail a copy has been placed in your outbox. check the account settings for the outgoing server. I am clueless what do i do next. Thanks!
August 13th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I would truly appreciat any assistance or advice that you could give me. I am following all of the steps that were reccomended to send a photo via my I-phone, however, the receivers are not receiving them. When I press send, should I get a receipt that the photo was sent? You know, kind of when you send a message through your regular e-mail.
Thank you,
Peter Ortenzi
October 23rd, 2009 at 8:26 am
I am having the same issue. I want to send a picture from my iphone but it never goes to my email. I do not think it even is being sent. I have done it before and It worked. Now it isn’t. What is the problem?? Thank you Lucy