One much requested feature not currently in Lightroom is the ability to email files from inside the program. Or is it? With the advent of the Export Action in Beta 4, it is. Originally in this post I suggested adding you email client (Mail in my case) as an external editor, this still works but there is a better way. Create an Alias/Shortcut for your program and place it in the Export Actions Folder (see Below for the location). Now select the images you want to email. Hit CMD/CTRL Shift E to Export and use the following settings:
File Format: Jpeg, Quality:60, Constrain (ticked) Width:700, Length:700, Color Space:sRGB, dpi: 72 and in the Export action select Mail.app (or your email client name). This will open a reduced size and quality copy of your files in Mail ready to email. To reduce the size further you could try Quality 50 instead of 60. 
While you can’t add more than one external editor, you can export to as many programs as you like by putting an alias/shortcut to the program in you Export Actions folder in the Adobe Lightroom folder. This is in a hidden folder in My Documents called Application Data on XP and in your User Library on OS X i.e. My Documents/Application Data/Adobe Lightroom/Export Actions or User/Library/Adobe Lightroom/Export Actions
I recently released a plugin to send pictures via smtp from light-room. It supports Gmail SSLv3/TLS, multiple STMP server etc..
support both Mac and PC
First release updates and bugs fixes on the way but works nicely 😛
http://www.philbertphotos.com/export-to-email-plugin-for-lightroom-2.html
It’s not.
Thank you. Is it possible to place in this action recipent’s e-mail o and subject of the letter ?
Anyone have any ideas of how to have it automatically clean up (delete the exported files) after the email is created? I can see myself forgetting to do this manually…
When a program doesn’t support drag and drop properly OS X intervenes and displays it in Preview.
Entourage is not the only program to act this way unfortunatley.
Excellent tip and thanks for posting it. Worked like a hot damn with Mail but when I tried to use with Entourage it merely opened up the picture in Preview. Odd…
saleh: I’m not Gordon, but there is a Gordon with lightroom videos… Sean.
Maddog. Cheers, although I did find the folder on there on my XP partition.
narayan: No idea. None of the other programs providing email facilities offer it either though.
What I really want to do is perform a bit of sharpening before mailing. With 10.x megapixels going down to 800×600 or so, edges get a bit soft.
Any idea how to do this?
hi Gordon!
I found your video on google about lightroom. I’m using lightroom recently.and I want to appreciate what you do to introduce lightroom . it was so useful.
this is where I upload my pics:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/salehbaba
thanks
Correction Sean-
In Windows XP the folder is: (Root Drive)DOCUMENTS and SETTINGS((your)user name)Application DataAdobeLightroomExport Actions
This might relieve some confusion for XP users on where to find this folder.
Thanks for the tip!
-1maddog
Many thanks, that’s going to be useful and a great time saver.
Right click on Mail and select make alias. drag this to the Export Actions folder
I’m probably missing the obvious, but I’m puzzled as to how to place an alias for Mail.app in the Export Actions folder. Did you make use of Automator?