Sending a few email posts to Blogger, I had different results depending on which email host I used. When I started I had worldnet.att.net, sbcglobal.net, and yahoo.com accounts.
The best post-with-image results were achieved by uploading the image to Photobucket.com, creating the post in a text editor, using simple markup, and attaching the file to a yahoo.com email.
Using Photobucket has an advantage over Blogger / Picasaweb uploads because when an image is emailed, Photobucket replies with the image address. It's an album address, but that can easily be trimmed to an image address. With the image address in-hand, a complete post with inline images can be easily written.
For this post, the return email provided this album address:
http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff46/bytommie/blogged/?action=view¤t=img_0831c3-85.jpg
For the post, I trimmed the album part to give the image address:
http://s239.photobucket.com/albums/ff46/bytommie/blogged/img_0831c3-85.jpg
This is the same address that Photobucket provides as the Direct Link when I am logged in.
I normally crop images to the subject, scale to 1,200px wide, and save with compression, with a file size of around 200KB - 250KB. I'm not an artist and since the image is usually supporting the words, I find that adequate quality for the full-size image.
The post (this post) is written in a text editor and saved as post_name.html (no spaces in the name.) It is necessary to do markup, but that is usually limited to paragraphs, line-breaks, link, image and image link, and possibly emphasis.
For the markup, I use a simple method. I write, leaving an empty line between paragraphs. When I am done, I put <p> at the start of the post and </p> at the end.
On the blank lines, I insert </p><p>.
To create a blog-size image with a link to a large copy, the code is simple:
<a href="http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff46/bytommie/hydrantc3logo-header.jpg"><img style="width:280px;display:block;float:left;margin:0 8px 8px 0;border:0;padding:0;" src=" http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff46/bytommie/hydrantc3logo-header.jpg"/></a>
Some lines may need a line-break at the end and that's <br />.
Bold can be done by wrapping words in <b> </b>, and italics in <i> </i>
Links are the same as linked images, just use the words instead of <img src="" />
Once coded the post can be viewed in a browser - it just won't be formatted exactly like the blog because the blog's width and fonts aren't included.
And, that's pretty much it. Spell check and read it over and it's ready to go.
When it's time to send to the blog, create an email post, make the post title the subject, leave the body empty, attach the html file, and send.
