Vernell mentioned that she used the Contact Sheet maker in Photoshop to do the photo strips on her page, and I thought it would make a good topic for a tutorial! Since our theme this month is Learn, tutorials are called for, don't you think?
Here we go. You can click on each image to see it bigger.
Step 1. Open all the photos you want to include. You can use a mix of portrait and landscape photos, however for this tutorial I used only portrait oriented photos.
Step 2. Go to File>Automate>Contact Sheet
Step 3. Enter all the necessary info.
a. Source - tell it where the photos are, in this case Use Open Documents. You can also specify which folder on your computer the photos you want to use are in, but make sure that only the photos you will be using are in that folder!
b. Document - I used a document size of 8x10 inches since I know that will fit on either a letter size or A4 sheet of photo paper for printing. I kept the default 300 dpi as the resolution. Check the Flatten All Layers box to avoid having to do this step yourself later.
c. Thumbnails - This determines the sizes of your index prints depending on how many rows and columns you input. As you change these numbers you will see the size of the thumbnail changing to the right, under the schematic. Don't worry if it shows you will have more photos than you opened; it only uses each photo once. I like to fiddle with the numbers until I get a size I like. In this case I made sure that the proportions were similar to a portrait photo (i.e width smaller than height).
Choose either Place down first , or place across first if you have a preference for how the photos are laid out. Down first means the photos will be laid out in columns first, across first in rows first.
Uncheck the Use Auto Spacing box (I forgot to do this) and enter how much space you want between the photos. I usually opt for a tiny horizontal margin and a larger vertical one (for ease of cutting the strips apart).
Uncheck the Rotate for best fit box, unless you plan to cut the photos apart. If not you might end up with some photos in the wrong orientation.
I also unchecked the Use File Name as Caption box since I didn't want those on there. I tend not to rename my photos so the names are things like IMG2765!
d. Then hit ok. Don't freak out! Your screen will start flashing at you as Photoshop goes through the processing. Eventually it will stop and you will end up with this result.
See that tiny little photo in the first strip? I didn't realise this photo was smaller in pixel size than the others, so it's a dud. I'll figure out how to cover that up when I use these on a page!
Now you can save the resulting file and/or print it out to scrapbook!
Here's an example of a page I've done previously using this method.
Check back later this month to see how I used the strips I made in this tutorial!
Have any questions? Please leave a comment below, or email me at scraphappyfran "at" yahoo.com. And if you use this technique on a page link me up!
