(Archived) Emailing notes with photos from iPhone 4

[jrcchicago 17]

I use EN for Mac desktop and the iPhone client. I recently created a large number (approx. 150) notes using the Mac desktop application from photos taken with my iPhone 4, and today found that the notes created from these photos are so large that when I emailed the EN notes to my wife, she could see the complete note on her iPad even when downloading off of WiFi instead of 3G. This wasn't a problem with my old phone, and appears to be related to the size of the photo. Is there a way (or is a method in the works) to shrink the size of the note as it is emailed?

[engberg 89]

No, not currently ... if you mail a note to someone, we'll always send the actual files and attachments for that note without modification.

[jrcchicago 17]

Thanks for the quick response, Dave. Any idea how to deal with the problem? It shouldn't be the connection speed - using WiFi didn't help - and I had the same problem when I emailed the note to her premium Evernote account and then she synced to her iPad: the note synced to the iPad app had the thumbnail but not the full picture. When I exported the note from my EN account onto a flash drive and walked it over to her computer, imported it into her account, and then synced to her iPad, the full version downloaded. It's a pretty cumbersome workaround, though. She doesn't have trouble downloading photos I send from the iPhone when I send them directly from the camera or mail apps.

[engberg 89]

So you're trying to email from your Evernote account to the "incoming email address" for her account? I.e. it works fine if she received the email to a normal email address, but you're trying to use this to copy notes into her account?

[jrcchicago 17]

No, it doesn't work either way. She could see the photo in the emailed note on her nearly three-year-old iMac when I emailed it, but her iPad couldn't read it whether I emailed it to her regular email account or her Evernote email address. When I exported a large number of similar notes to a flash drive then walked them over to the iMac, imported them into the Mac client, then synced the iPad client, those notes were fully usable in the iPad client.

[engberg 89]

Where did the image come from originally? I.e. did you just take this as a picture note from that same phone?

[JMichaelTest 19]

This sounds like the same issue discussed in Snapshot downscaling.

Basically the iPhone 4 Camera always returns a very high resolution image, which can easily be around 5 MB.

Each iPhone app must then perform any desired scaling.

We really need some basic image scaling in EN iPhone.

We don't need Photoshop -- just a very simple, very easy image scale selection.

[sterlingz 7]

I don't like either of the options within Evernote iPhone for creating photo notes. Neither is particularly streamlined, and worse, the Camera Roll Note currently strips out the EXIF data including GPS, instead putting in your current location wherever you create the note. Useless for using the much-touted geo-location features. Hopefully this is getting addressed for the next release.

Instead, what I do is send the image to Evernote from the iPhone's Photos app. This lets me do several things:

1. Preserve EXIF data including GPS coordinates, so the location of the note will actually be meaningful.

2. Easily select which photo I want to send to Evernote; sometimes I take multiple frames to ensure I get a sharp one. Due to API restrictions, there's no way Evernote can let you pinch to zoom a photo before you select it. All you can see is the thumbnail, which makes it tough to judge. In the Photos app, I can very quickly check focus and exposure on multiple frames and e-mail only the ones I want.

3. Choose the scale of the image; when composing your e-mail, the photos app gives you several choices including original resolution, as well as several smaller options (it will tell you exactly how much data the file size will take up).

4. Easily enter a note title, choose a notebook, and add tags through the e-mail subject line shortcuts @ and #. This is much faster than the clumsy method the app uses, forcing you to first create and upload the note, then go and edit its information.

I'm hopeful we're going to see some substantial improvements to the iPhone client very soon, to bring it more in line with the iPad app. For me personally, the splash screen is a big turn off because I find the client very inefficient at creating any of the types on notes offered (I'd rather use the method described above for photos, Voice Memos for recordings, and a dedicated text editor for text), and the navigation of notes is hopelessly convoluted. CEO Phil Libin said on the podcast that he's been using an internal beta of the new client that makes the current one seem "primitive." That's exactly how I'd describe it, so I'm really looking forward to what comes next.

To the OP's initial question - I absolutely hate that Evernote for Mac brought the e-mail function inside of Evernote itself. That was a really bad move, much loathed when it happened, for a whole host of reasons including the one you mentioned here. The Mac Mail.app offers great flexibility in sizing images - why should Evernote build this functionality in when it's already in the OS? I think there are many, many other priorities for Evernote to get right before dedicating resources to image editing, even if it only is just sizing.

How I handle send images from Evernote Mac Client:

1. Create new mail message in Mail.app

2. Drag image from Evernote note across to new message

3. In Mail.app, at the bottom of the message, you can select which size you want to send the photo, original and three other sizes

I think it's awesome how Apple has built this functionality right into Mac OS and iOS. There's really no need for Evernote to build in image sizing. I realize this doesn't address the issue of e-mailing notes directly from the iPhone client - but my suggestion would be to ensure that the photos get sized as they are sent into Evernote, and then it won't be a problem. It'll help with your storage quota too I don't think Evernote should get too involved in image sizing when Apple's already provided options.

[engberg 89]

Re: your first #1 ... we're modifying our application so that if you create a note in Evernote using a single picture from the camera roll, we'll set the location for that note based on the coordinates in the camera roll image, not based on your current position while creating the note.

Thanks

[sterlingz 7]

Re: your first #1 ... we're modifying our application so that if you create a note in Evernote using a single picture from the camera roll, we'll set the location for that note based on the coordinates in the camera roll image, not based on your current position while creating the note.

Thanks

Excellent news, thanks.

[sterlingz 7]

Hi everyone - I was playing around with the latest versions of Eye-Fi software, both on the desktop and iPhone, and I discovered another cool way to get photos quickly into Evernote.

Eye-Fi cards are of course great for allowing you to send photos from your digital camera directly to Evernote, but I'd kind of ignored their iPhone app until recently. Using the Eye-Fi Center software on the desktop, you can choose different sharing services and preferences for both your Eye-Fi card and iPhone, which is great. For example, you might want to send images from your camera directly to Flickr, and photos from your iPhone to Evernote. The latest release of the Eye Fi Center allows this.

You can choose from the original size, as well as three smaller sizes: 1600, 1024 and 640 to be delivered to your Evernote account. In addition, you have the option of delivering a copy of the original size image to a specific folder on your hard drive at the same time, where it can be auto-imported by iPhoto, Lightroom or another app.

The reason why this is great is because I can't imagine a faster way to get a series of photos into Evernote as separate notes. In the Eye-Fi iPhone app, you simply scroll down the list, check off the images you want to create notes from, hit upload, and voilà, your photos are in Evernote as separate notes containing downsampled photos! True, you now have to go back and assign titles, notebooks and tags, but this is more quickly done on the desktop anyway. My only complaint is that the uploader is a little buggy - it gives you a count of remaining uploads, but the screen is locked, so you can't scroll up and down the list of photos to see individual progress on various photos. No biggie, if you're on WiFi, the uploading is pretty quick, even with iPhone 4 images.

The Eye-Fi app is free, and I'm pretty sure you can use the desktop software even if you don't own a card, you just need to create an account with Eye-Fi (don't quote me on that - not totally sure). Kudos to Eye-Fi for a great integration! I loved it already for sending images from my digital camera, but this iPhone app is a great bonus! I didn't really get the app's purpose before, but it's actually the perfect complement to Evernote!

E-mailing is still the superior solution if you want to:

A. Assign title, notebook and tags at the time of upload

B. Add multiple photos to the same note

But for speed of batch upload, the Eye-Fi app can't be beat.

[JMichaelTest 19]

Hi everyone - I was playing around with the latest versions of Eye-Fi software, both on the desktop and iPhone, and I discovered another cool way to get photos quickly into Evernote

. . .

The Eye-Fi app is free, and I'm pretty sure you can use the desktop software even if you don't own a card, you just need to create an account with Eye-Fi (don't quote me on that - not totally sure). Kudos to Eye-Fi for a great integration! . . . but it's actually the perfect complement to Evernote!

E-mailing is still the superior solution if you want to:

A. Assign title, notebook and tags at the time of upload

B. Add multiple photos to the same note

But for speed of batch upload, the Eye-Fi app can't be beat.

Eye-Fi sounded like a great iPhone app but the reviews in iTunes are bad: 2 stars out of 5.

Many reviewers calling it a "almost useless" application.

Have you experienced any of the issues the reviewers identified?

[sterlingz 7]

Eye-Fi sounded like a great iPhone app but the reviews in iTunes are bad: 2 stars out of 5.

Many reviewers calling it a "almost useless" application.

Have you experienced any of the issues the reviewers identified?

I think the bad reviews are partially due to misperception of what the application is for, which is a communications issue for Eye-Fi. I initially thought the app was useless too, and never even launched it again until this week. I thought it was going to allow me to determine destinations for my Eye-Fi card on the fly, so I was really disappointed with the functionality of the app (though I recently found out that there is a mobile optimized website where you can do this: http://m.center.eye.fi). I didn't understand the value of another app to publish photos from the camera roll to various sharing websites. I have lots of other apps to publish to Flickr, MobileMe, etc. and I didn't really see the point of using this one. However, it has a niche for me with batch upload to Evernote, and the fact that the images get resized on Eye-Fi's servers before posting to Evernote is another benefit. The fact that this processing is done server side means that the photos take longer to upload (worth considering if on 3G) but that your phone doesn't have to do the re-rendering, so the timing is a wash.

I also think a lot of the negative reviews are due to the fact that Eye-Fi took awhile to update the app after iOS 4 came out, and the app wasn't functioning properly. I definitely think there are some rough edges - as I mentioned, the app locks up during upload, and I don't think it will continue in the background if you switch to another app. It would be nice to have the functionality of the Eye Fi Center built into the app (or at least linked to). I would give it three stars. A good start, with room to grow, with a special use case for batch uploading images to Evernote.