[j sotelo]

How to make a CONTACT SHEET

A contact sheet is a file in Photoshop containing thumbnail references to photos in a particular folder. This is useful for many tasks, you can use it for, sending your clients a list of photos for their approval, archiving, or one of the most useful reason is to organize your images visually instead of using a file name system.

1.- Put the images you want in the contact sheet in a SPECIFIC FOLDER.





2.- To begin making your contact sheet, go to FILE, AUTOMATE, CONTACT SHEET II. Click the CHOOSE button. Browse and find the folder with the images and select it.





3.- Now specify the size of the sheet. WIDTH, HEIGHT, RESOLUTION. Leave the resolution at 72dpi for viewing on your PC and 150dpi for laser or inkjet printers.You can see the preview on the right side as you modify the values.





4.- Select the color mode for your sheet from the MODE drop down menu. You can choose depending on the color mode your using.





5.- You cab choose how many COLUMS and ROWS you want on your sheet. You can see the preview on the right hand side as you modify the values. This affects the thumbnail size.

[j sotelo]

6.- Pick the type Font and Size you want to use for your captions.





7.- Click ok and Your CONTACT SHEET will be built to your specifications. Once its finished and it’s a Photoshop File, you can modify it any way you want. You can even save it as a PDF file. That way it will be easy to e-mail. Just go to FILE, SAVE AS and choose whatever you need most.

I know this is a simple task for many, but on the other hand there’s a lot of friends new to Photoshop that might find this useful. HAVE FUN WITH IT !!

[water]

I think I will find this a useful addition to my photoshop 'skills'

[Victoria]

Brilliant. I had no idea you could do this with PS.

[Steve]

Very useful guide

[Rob Barron]

Good addition to the tutorials, Joe.

Just one little addition that might be of use: following the instructions above, if you input the size as 12cms by 12cms and put the source folder as the CD you have backed up your images to, it will print out a very handy reference sheet of the pictures on your CD, perfectly sized for the CD case. This is extremely useful if you have, like me, got a sizeable archive of CDs or DVDs with thousands of pictures. You can find a picture far more easily using a contact sheet or CD cover where you can see the images rather than have to remember the file name!

Thanks Joe, good work.
Rob

[Charlotte]

Funny you should post this tutorial when you did J, as I had just printed my first contact sheet earlier in the day

I'd just like to add a couple of tips on usage:

(1) It's very useful for itentifying best photo's at a glance ref. composition, colour etc., and also you can see if there's a strong overall colour cast

(2) Also use contact sheets as a learning tool, i.e. print the thumbnails including metadata, that way you can see what did or didn't work + why ref. camera settings

I use Picture Project to print the raws, as a starting point. Well, I'm going to from now on, as I found the first one I did quite useful in this regard, and have just printed another of a shoot I did today, so will utilise this method more now. It beats looking at them on the screen, in some respects