[franca]

Would you like to make enemies among your friends and family? Easy! Just e-mail them high-resolution pictures. Not only will they take forever to download; the dimensions will be huge.

Most scanning programs allow you to set the resolution and select the file format (.tif is the most common for uncompressed files, and .jpg is most common for compressed files). That's also true of photo programs, like Adobe Photo Elements and Ulead Photo Impact. If the recipient is going to view the photo on a computer monitor, set the resolution at 72 dots per inch. Setting it higher won't improve the monitor view. And always save files for e-mail in the .jpg format, as almost any .tif file will be huge.

If the recipient is going to print the picture, you might want to go as high as 300 dpi, although 150 will probably work fine. Remember this: The higher the resolution, the larger the file. People with dial-up Web connections will not appreciate unnecessarily high resolutions. Also set the dimensions. For printing, I like 4x6 or 5x7. For viewing on a monitor, I would not go larger than 4x6.