The data flow diagram of FIG. 7 is similar to the one depicted in FIG. 5 in many respects. For the sake of brevity, similar message exchanges have been labeled with the same reference numbers in FIGS. 5 and 7, and a description of these similar steps is omitted here for the sake of brevity. One difference between the action taken in FIG. 5 and the one taken in FIG. 7 is that, when the image is encoded and encrypted at 506, it may be encoded at multiple different qualities, as outlined in FIG. 8A. Correspondingly, a new procedure 702 is added to render the image at intermediate qualities, as described in connection with FIG. 8B.
Also, the procedure 528 for forwarding the image to a new recipient is omitted in order to save space, but this procedure (described in FIG. 6C) may be used in connection with the embodiment shown in FIGS. 7-8B in the same manner as described above for the thumbnail/full image embodiment (except that the data lengths corresponding to the intermediate image qualities, not just the thumbnail quality, would be loaded into the new image message).
