(Printing) CONTACT SHEETS - WHAT ARE THEY AND HOW TO MAKE THEM

Click here to show the Contact Sheets Screen.

You can bring up the Contact Sheets window by using the Tools Menu and selecting the "Print Contact Sheets" option. You can also bring it up from the Main Menu. Click the "Print" main menu option and then click on "Print Contact Sheets".

If you've ever taken a bunch of photos in the old days and wanted a print that contained all of the photos from the roll of film, that was called a contact sheet. It was basically a print that had a grid of thumbnailed photos all on one sheet or a couple of sheets. This is especially useful if you wanted to show your friends some pictures that they may want copies of. So, instead of bringing all the photos, you just bring the contact sheet and they pick the ones that they want enlargements of.

Now you can do contact sheets from Photo Jockey. You can take the photos in a folder and then select how many rows (to control the size of the thumbnails) and then select the paper size and then print it.

HINT: Also, any text comments or Database fields that you may have for your images can be integrated into the Contact Sheets too. Basically the integrated text can be placed underneath each thumbnailed image.

TIP: You can even SAVE your contact sheets as regular JPG image files.

Here are some cool features you can use while building the contact sheets:

Only Use Tagged Files: Check this if you have selected several files and those are the only files you want in the contact sheets. See section on "Selecting Multiple Files".

Number of Rows In Contact: This controls how many rows of thumbnails appear on each contact sheet page.

Contact Shape: This controls the shape of the contact thumbnails. They can be wide or tall or square. MOST photos are taken in Landscape mode, which is the wide mode.

Print Filenames & Header: This shows the filenames on the contact sheet below each photo. It also shows a header, at the top of the page, that shows the contact sheet page number and your company name if you desire..

Allocate Notes Space: This adds a bunch of blank space under each photo for you to write in notes or whatever. You can select a "Notes Type" so that comments or database integration will place the text under the photo automatically.

Notes Under Each Image: This section allows you to control where the notes come from and how they should appear.

NOTE: Any text that can not fit into the space provided will be indicated by a RED BAR. If the text is too many lines, the bottom of the text area will have a red bar to indicate a text overflow. If any words are so long that they can not fit within the width of the text area, then a red vertical bar is shown.

FONT: This allows you to select a font and size and color for the special notes text.

Background: This allows you to select a background color for the special text. Make sure you select a color that is DIFFERENT from you font color. Otherwise, you will NOT SEE your special text.

Notes Type: This allows you to select where the notes come from. You can choose from the following:

Leave Blank

Text Comments

Database Category

Database Keywords

Database Notes

Notes Size: This allows you to select how much space is allocated to the special notes. You can choose from the following:

Small

Medium

Large

NOTE: If you see the RED BAR indicating that all the text won't fit, then try using a larger size.As you increase the size of the box used for the special text, you will notice that it also becomes more narrow because more images can fit on the row. To make the text box WIDER, select a SMALLER "Number of rows in contact".

Save Contacts To Disk: This allows you to SAVE the contact sheets to disk INSTEAD of printing them.

If you have Checked the "Save Contacts To Disk", then you will see these saving options:
Save Functions:
Contact Image Resolution:
You can select the image size that you want to use for your contact sheets. The larger the image, the better the quality.

2048x1536

1500x1125

1024x768

Save Contact Sheet(s)
This allows you to SAVE the contact sheets. If you are saving many sheets, then the filename you give will NOT be the filenames that are used to save your sheets. For example: If you use a filename of "Paris_.jpg", then the resulting contact sheets could be called "Paris_1.jpg", "Paris_2.jpg", "Paris_3.jpg". You can choose from BMP or JPG or GIF files. If you pick JPG, then you can select from 3 different quality settings. If you pick GIF, you can select from 4 different quality settings.

If you have UNChecked the "Save Contacts To Disk", then you will see these printing options:
Print Functions:

Landscape Printing: This prints the contact sheet in landscape (wide) mode. If unchecked, then it prints in portrait (tall) mode.

Printer Setup: This allows you to select which printer you will be using.

Print Contact Sheet(s): This prints the contact sheets with the options you have selected.

Enlarge Mode: There are several methods available. The "REED" method is the best for enlarging by a large amount and you want the best smoothing and sharpness for photos. Use "GENERIC" if you want the FASTEST results. but can never be the best quality. For more information about all the various resizing options, click here.

Auto Preview: This rebuilds the preview after you change any option that may affect the appearance of a contact sheet. If your computer is slow, you may want to UNcheck this option.

Smart Rotate: This automatically rotates any thumbnail so that it fits better in the contact shape you have selected. For example: If your shape was portrait and a photo being placed on the contact sheet was taken in landscape mode (wide), then the thumbnail will be rotated so as to fit better. Play with it, it's pretty cool.

Change Order: This tells you how to change the order of the thumbnails on the contact sheet. You basically drag and drop the thumbnails around to where you want them. You can also drop onto other programs like Outlook or Netscape or FireFox or Windows File Manager (tree view explorer).

Starting Page #: This allows you to view any page of the contact sheets before printing them.

Preview Contact Sheet: If you had UNchecked the "Auto Preview" option and want to see the contact sheet as it would look like printed, then click this button.

HINT: You can double click any of the thumbnails to bring up a Preview Window so you can see the image in more detail.



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