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Tips for putting an image in a signature


Attachment Tamer ensures that your signatures that contain images will always be sent with these images embedded in HTML and thus displayed in place to the recipients even if you add other attachments to the message. There are a few necessary conditions for images in signatures to work smoothly:

1. To get the best results across different email software, use a small GIF, JPEG or PNG image file. Prepare it in your image editor of choice, save it and then drag the file into the signature in Mail. Avoid copying and pasting directly from an image editor, images larger than a few kilobytes, and other formats, especially PDF. PDF is not a bitmap image file format and cannot be displayed in place in most email clients.

2. Set your message format to rich text.

3. For obvious reasons, do not enable the advanced option to Send regular attachments only (no embedded images). (The option is off by default.)

Note: Since Attachment Tamer version 3.1.7 it is no longer necessary to manually switch images in signatures to be displayed in place on OS X 10.6 and newer.

Known problems: (1) The “Missing Plug-in” or the blue brick problem. (2) The fact Mail breaks table-based layouts, which contain images. These two problems not related to Attachment Tamer. (3) Additionally, when using Attachment Tamer on Mac OS X 10.5 images inserted into signatures are initially displayed as icons.

Workarounds: (1) It seems that you can safely ignore that the text “Missing Plug-in” (or a blue brick) is sometimes displayed instead of your attachment: the attachment is there nevertheless. (2) If you need an elaborate layout, consider either using a stationery (which allows any HTML layout), or using remote images (such that reside on a web server) instead of attached images (such that are sent within the message): SignatureProfiler, a free Mail plug-in, allows you to do that. (3) If you use Mac OS X 10.5 and an image in your signature is initially displayed as an icon, right-click it and choose View in Place.