Outlook is great. It’s great. So great, in fact, that someone just asked me to blog one of their greatest Outlook concerns. Not quite sure if anybody on the Outlook team gives a rip, but… here’s what Derek sent me earlier:
“When I put pictures into an Outlook HTML email, they are much less quality and significantly larger, even though Outlook reports that they are 100%. Images also seem to gain 300% more in file size (kb). Comparing them to the Image and Fax Viewer or other image editing software at 100%, Outlook inserts the image at 30% bigger. After doing some research, MS is using the Word Editor – which assumes images to be inserted at a DPI of 96, although most digital cameras go between 72 DPI (Mac’s standard) and somewhere around 200 DPI. Images inserted at 72 will be upsampled (using MS’s rather poor upsampling engine). Images larger than 96 dpi will appear smaller than the original image. To change the DPI (or PPI) value, you must open the picture with a non-Microsoft product, then resample the picture to the 96 DPI, just to have the image appear in the email appear correctly. Even some pictures with a DPI value of 96 will still be upsampled. This is a tremendous inconvenience for those doing email newsletters, and I can assure you novice users will not know why their images are changing in quality and size.”
I really wish Microsoft would issue an interim release of Outlook, much like they did with Outlook 98 (fixing with it countless bugs). This is just, kinda… irresponsible?