It usually does not make much sense to hide the images for some contacts of the user like family members, business partners or friends. That’s why Google decided to change the way images are handled in Gmail slightly.

Gmail will now display images automatically if the account owner has send an email to the sender at least twice in the past. It should also be noted that the images will only be displayed if the email is send from an authenticated server such as Google Mail, Yahoo Mail or Windows Live Mail.

Every other email with images will be handled just like before. This new behavior can be changed in the Gmail settings so that images in emails are handled for all contacts like before. To do that click on the Settings link in the top right corner and locate the External content option in the General tab.

The default option should be “Always display external content (such as images) sent by trusted senders”. To revert to the old way simply select “Ask before displaying external content” instead and click on the Save Changes button to save the new setting.