I really need some help with digital photographs......?

I 've got a little digital camera (Olympus 渭 760)and when I save the photos on my PC they are like 1mb each whereas the photos my friends send me are only a few kbs! Do I have to change the analysis or sth on the camera or can I do sth once I have transfered them to my PC?

I am using mostly Olympus Master 2

Unless you are taking pictures specifically to share via email, or really short on hard disk space, I strongly recommend using the highest setting your camera allows (highest megapixel setting and minimum compression). Memory cards are also very cheap these days.

In most situations, you won't get a second chance at taking pictures and highest setting preserves as much detail as possible. And you will want details for printing and cropping unwanted parts from the image.

If you are using Windows, use applications such as Picasa to manage photos. It has export feature that converts large photos (without deleting the original) down to few hundred KBs, ideal for online sharing.

On Mac, use iPhoto (comes with the system) to do the same.

Alternatively, you may wish to share photos via website instead of email. Flickr is one of the best websites for sharing photos online.

Most likely the photos that are being sent to you are compressed or resized to make them easier to e-mail. For example (using approximate numbers), when I take a picture and save it to my PC it will be a couple of mb large. If I sent that picture to a friend through e-mail using Picassa, it is automatically resized (and quality reduced) to make it 45k or so...

You should keep the larger file sizes on the PC because there is more detail when cropping, zooming, and printing. You would NOT be able to do much of this with a photo in the kb range. Forget about printing a picture that small.

Summary:
Smaller File Size = easy to e-mail multiple photos or over slow connection. Can't print, good luck cropping or zooming. Might be good for cell phone desktop picture.
Larger File Size = Good for everything else.