aahhh photohshop contact sheets, please help!!!

[leeb]

hi all,

i am currently trying to create seperate contact sheets for each group of images i have, in this case i need one sheet per person, so there are 4-10 images each and they all need to be seperate.

only way i have been able to do it is to put every group of shots into an individual folder, and then do each one through the automate, contact sheet II option, what i really want to do is for it to use the images for each folder per sheet. nope, not having it!

If i click 'include all subfolders' it carries images over onto others contact sheets, for example if there are only 5 in one set, the other 5 on the page will be another ser, even though it is from a different sub folder.

help would really be appreciated, i have googled it but just got the proces on how to create individual contact sheets.

thanks a lot..

lee

[miniman]

Friend of mine does a lot of contact sheets for on-site event photography. He just uses the built-in Windows print picture wizard:

- select images from Windows Explorer (CTRL+Click to select multiple images)
- Right-click and choose Print
- Go through the wizard until page 3 then choose layout "Contact Sheet Prints" or one of the similar ones
- Finish

Only drawback here is selecting files from multiple folders, although you could use the Windows search function to list all images in a series of folders and select from there.

[touching cloth]

You could try using Picassa, it has fairly good Contact sheet function. Can select any number of files and it will compile them neatly for you on one page, then you can either save that as a separate image file or just print it off.

[leeb]

miniman,

this is exactly what i did befre mate, last monday, printed 400 contact sheets, incorporating proof cards and order details all on the same sheet, images were only tiny, was all ok'd by the people in charge, comes back this morning that the client says the images are too small!!!! to say im p1ssed at the whole thing doesnt even come close.

so i am having to do it through photoshop, making the images larger by selectin to have 2wide x 5 images down, and it looks better, but i am having to do it one folder at a time, i tried making an action to batch action it, but i cant get it to work and open the next folder.

Clicking the 'include sub folders' just makes it import some images from one folder, then if it doenst fill the page, it will take them from the next folder totally defeating the object.

monitor is soon to meet and fight closed window!!!!

[miniman]

I assume the "Wallet Prints" option (at the bottom of the list in the Windows print wizard - 3 x 3 images) is no good either?

I just downloaded Picasa as mentioned above and it looks pretty slick - I would definitely give that a try.

[james f esq]

picasa is great ive had it for a while as a preiver and sorter its great

[leeb]

miniman said:

I assume the "Wallet Prints" option (at the bottom of the list in the Windows print wizard - 3 x 3 images) is no good either?

I just downloaded Picasa as mentioned above and it looks pretty slick - I would definitely give that a try.

just downloading picasa now, i will see how i get on with it.

trouble with the wallet prints option is that it doesnt print the file name on the sheet, just the image. so they cant reference it to order.

[Bacardi]

If you were on a mac, sounds like a job for Automator.

[touching cloth]

Just had a quick sqizz at Picassa again, it doesn't offer the option (well not that I can find) to apend the file name onto the contact sheet either so might not achieve what you are after.

Edited by touching cloth on Tuesday 27th March 10:03

[leeb]

i did find that with it, so i am now going through every folder creating an individual contact sheet, flatten, save as. not a whole lot of fun!

there must be a way it can be batched, i am even struggling to find a way to open the contact sheet options box with a couple of clicks. sounds daft but moving the mouse all the way over to the file, automate is a big pain in the arse each and every time.

[tog]

Photo Mechanic can make contact sheets well. It's an excellent image browser for editing and captioning a shoot quickly, but it's not a database or archiving tool so quite expensive if you need that sort of functionality too. I think there's a fully functioning demo available.

[Bacardi]

leeb said:

there must be a way it can be batched, i am even struggling to find a way to open the contact sheet options box with a couple of clicks. sounds daft but moving the mouse all the way over to the file, automate is a big pain in the arse each and every time.

You need to make an 'action' when making your contact sheet then you can make a droplet of that action on your desktop, so that when you drop a folder onto the droplet it will save a contact sheet within that folder (assuming you have set your action up correctly). That will save you having to go through menus.

It takes a little practice to set up the routine and the batch dialogue isn't very intuitive. You need to be careful about things like your 'destination' and 'override save as' commands. When experimenting with actions it's a good idea to have a test folder with some expendable images in until you are confident it's working correctly. It's possible to run an action over a folder of images and have it re-save each file as the same named first file, in other words you could end up with one pic when you started with 10... you have been warned.... be careful!

All the contacts would have the same name i.e. 'contact sheet 001.psd' within each folder of images. So, if you wanted to put all the contacts in another folder together you would need to rename them sequentially first. To get the computer to run an action over multiple folders and then create sequentially numbered contacts within each folder, or in another destination, requires some sort of scripting, beyond what PS has. I haven't tried it but, if I needed to do this I would be looking at Automator, which is part of OSX and can run actions across multiple applications including the OS. I'm sure there are some third party scripting apps for PCs as well.

If it's a one off job, it may be quicker just to do it manually. If it's something you need to do a lot, it's worth spending the time to learn about actions. Look in PS help for more detailed explanations. Search for Actions, Batch and droplets... or RTM.

HTH

[leeb]

nice one, i do understand actions to a useable level, i will try tyo read through that again and make sence of it, if i can do it as a batch that would be a big easier help, and renaming them wouldnt be a huge drama, i will have a play


thanks for the help.

[leeb]

im not getting the droplets, read the help option, not a lot of help to me.

any chance someone can explain briefly what the droplet option does and how it works before i get trigger happy on it. thanks

[Bacardi]

www.photoshoplab.com/droplets-for-the-lazy.html
www.digitalphotobook.net/tutorials/actions/actions_9.html
http://wikivid.com/index.php/Photosho
www.adobeevangelists.com/pdfs/pscs2/automation.pdf

Should be something there to get you going

[leeb]

top job, thanks a lot.

[leeb]

that now makes sence!!

now i am havnig the problem that i have created an actoin recording a sample folder for the Contact sheet. trouble is, when i use the folders in the droplet, it always remembers the images that were used for the recorded action, and doesnt realise that it is now for a different folder?

is there any way to record the action, and make it not select the images used in the recording.

it also doesnt stop after the first sheet is done, not full up, but all images used, it just starts over, with the same image again and saves it as the next sequential file name. i know what i want it to do, and i am sure it knows how to do it, but can i???? like hell!!!

[leeb]

just tried it using a different type of action. and it worked perfectly ( i like this trick)

so i am guessing it is something to do with trying to record the automate - contact sheet as being the problem, which isnt so great!