Contact sheet software?

I've been trying out PhotoShop 7.0 contact sheet function but am not

really happy with results. Things I'm looking for:

 

1. All images in contact sheet rotated to be landscape orientation.

 

2. Compact size file name tucked under image in about same proportion

as traditional contact sheet.

 

3. Black background.

 

4. Frivolous, but what the heck: sprocket holes.

 

One fairly obvious way to achieve all of this would be flatbed scan

of roll. I've tried basic reflective scan with my 35mm negs in

photofile page and results were pretty bad.

 

Any ideas?

 

Any way to get flatbed to act like a giant transparency scanner? Has

anyone tried this?

 

Anyone know of a photoshop action (or other software) that can

analyze whether longer side of image is horizontal or vertical, make

it horizontal for purpose of contact sheet, then set it back to

portrait?

 

Any dedicated contact sheet generating software available/good?

Epson distribute a handy program called "PhotoQuicker" with the Epson 2100 printer, I don't know if it comes with other printers in the range. I've used it with my 1290 as well.

 

Thought quite consumer oriented, I've sucessfully used it for contact printing, it can print filenames and if the pix come from a digital camera the camera data as well.

 

Don't know if its available separately.

Mendel: You want a pretty 'custom' look so you'd probably need a pretty 'custom' piece of software. I don't know of any that are designed to mimic a traditional darkroom contact sheet exactly.

 

If you can create a Photoshop file that looks like a contact sheet of a blank roll (all-black background, sprocket holes, numbers, no images), and keep it as a master - then you could create TWO PS actions (one including a 90 degree rotation, one that doesn't) that reduce your images to 35mm size (1 x 1.5 inches). Then you could copy/paste them onto the master (doing a "save as" to protect both the picture original and the contact sheet 'blank' original for future use). It wouldn't be totally automated, though. You'd have to type in your own file names with the type tool. It would be a little labor intensive, but I bet you could do a whole "roll" of 36 (assuming you already have the pictures digitized) at a rate of about 30 seconds per image once you get your actions and a workflow down pat.

 

As to scanning full rolls on a flatbed for a contact-sheet look - there are several flatbeds that provide transmission light sources for film at up to full 8x10 area - Agfa Duoscan, Epson Expressions (don't know the model number) and possibly a Minolta and others - some replace the lid of the scanner with a lightbox-type dealie to shine light through the film, others have an internal film drawer with a separate moving light source. The Epson 2450 and its new replacement the 3200 will do up to two 35 x 6 neg strips at a time - you could scan 3 sets and combine the scans into one full contact sheet.

I use ACDSee but looking at their web site I see they now have <a href="http://www.acdsystems.com/English/Products/FotoSlate/index.htm">custom software</a>. It will probably do what you want but I bet it does not support ICC profiles. It is still worth a try; let us know if you do.

Hi Emre,

 

I'd forgotten about ADCSee's contact sheet capability. I'd used it in earlier release, could'nt find it in 5.0, till now. Help file search for "contact sheet" yields no result, even though this is the exact expression in Activities|Create pulldown.

 

The dialogue box is a little cryptic, are page size numbers pixels? Also, once you started fine-tuning one item, all the others start "auto-adjusting", so I found there's a bit of tearing around needed resetting spacing and number of rows/columns, but it is doable. Anyway, I set background color to black, set my margins and spaces quite tight, turned off captions (just used 10 rows of 4, easy to count). Before starting I copied the whole roll to sub-directory, and since majority were portrait, rotated (with acdsee batch rotate) the landscape format to match. All in all, fairly efficient. The output is rgb, and I couldn't figure out how to change that(my images are grey scale), so I just converted in photoshop after the fact. The result, with thin, uniform black background looks quite good.

 

Thanks for reminding me.

<i>The output is rgb, and I couldn't figure out how to change that(my images are grey scale), so I just converted in photoshop after the fact.</i>

<p>

Does changing the output format (Contact Sheet, Output tab) help? I believe the dimensions are in pixels.

Emre, you are right, output is pixels. Looking in output tab|jpeg settings (I don't need tiff for these), I don't see color option. No problem though, I can do the lot, then batch convert with photoshop action. Thanks again.

Dang, this is frustrating: just made a batch of contact sheets with ACDSee and virtually every one had at least one image that came out highly pixelated. Good old Canadian software, eh!

Well, I guess I'm kind of babbling to myself, anyways, one way I can figure to get half decent contact sheet, with black background is using photoshop function. Due to the fact that it's one and only background option appears to be white, I prep a copy of images to go on the contact sheet by inverting them (in tone), then after making contact sheet, saving it and flattening it, I invert it once more. This ends me up with black background. Also, before starting, I rotate all images in acdsee to portrait.

 

For what it's worth...

For black background in photoshop, set black as your background color in the toolbar. Then create a new file, and select use background color as the background. Or make a layer filled in with black and set it below your other layers.

Since I don't like the large amounts of white space Photoshop's Contact Sheet automation provides, I recorded a basic macro to do resizing and adjusting.<p>

The contact sheet results are left in multiple layers, and the background could be changed as part of that action.<p>

For example, my main contact sheet holds 20 images, 5 across and 4 down, with about 8-10 pixels between each image. All images are assumed to be vertical (I do a manual rotate step in the Photoshop Browser to ensure this before running the contact sheet.) I lie to Photoshop and tell it that the page size is 12x12, then run an action that scoots all the images closer together. The first step flattens the image for convenience, but if you wanted, you could swap the background color and text colors. (But be prepared to use up a lot more ink if you're using an inkjet for proofing...)<p>

Photoshop 7 supports scripting as well, JavaScript on Mac and PC, AppleScript on Mac, and VBasic on Windows; those could be used to check orientation. (I didn't bother, as I'm not an AppleScript or JavaScript expert, and the basic action was fine for my purposes.)

Hi Mark,

I managed to create new image and specify to use background color and have that color black, but, with the automated contact sheet, is there a way to make background black after image is created? I'm totally inexperienced with layer concept (and most other stuff) in photoshop.

 

Hi Kevin,

I'm really interested in "scooting all the images closer together". This is my main dislike with photoshop contact sheet. Like you, I orient all my images the same (portrait) for better fit. I use acdsee for this. Re "scooting", I'm really green, can you enlarge on that? Not step by step, but just point me in direction?

<ul><i>I'm really interested in "scooting all the images closer together". This is my main dislike with photoshop contact

sheet. [...] Re "scooting", I'm really green,

can you enlarge on that? Not step by step, but just point me in direction?</ul></i>

Sure.<p>

<ul><li>I use the browser to make sure all the files are vertical.<li>I run File > Automate > Contact Sheet and specify the page size (12x12x300 DPI for my 4x5 setup)<li>I run a text search-and-replace to remove the .jpg, .psd, .tif, etc. file extensions to reduce clutter -- this is the most timeconsuming step in the action, and I may remove it.<li>If you want to change the background color, do it now.<br>Select background layer; select color desired; select-all; tell Photoshop to fill the selection.<li>Flatten the image<br>(You have to do this, or the images are a LOT harder to get aligned neatly.)<li>Select the rightmost column of images with the marquee tool and move it to the left until it's "close enough" to the next column. Repeat until all the columns are close together.<br>(I used guides to get things lined up for the action)<li>Do the same to move them closer together vertically.<li>Select the active area and crop to that size<li>Set Canvas Size to the size you want<li>Add any logos or ID text</ul>

The hardest part was finding the page size Photoshop needed to think the page was for the image size I wanted.

Hi Kevin,

 

Thanks for all the info. My son gave me a few photshop pointers also, regarding layers, rulers, grid. I set the option to NOT flatten layers as it's producing the images in the contact sheet, and found it fairly easy to move them, snapping to grid points. I managed to produce something quite presentable.

 

Then, thinking it was A LOT of hassle, fixing up photoshop's shortcomings, I gave ACDSee's contact sheet function another try. This time I used (for my 35mm rolls) 8 rows of 5 in landscape format. Last time around, I used portrait format, and for some reason, almost every contact sheet has at least one image that was extremely pixelated looking. This time, in landscape mode, I've done two so far and they look fine. When you specify to show file name caption, you can justify it several ways and it doesn't show file extension.

To anyone interested in ACDSee's contact sheet function, I think I know what was causes the occasion pixelated image. When you run this function, it commences to generate a preview of the contact sheet. If you hit the ok button while this is still generating, it seem there's an even chance of pixelated image of the one being currently generated in the preview. Work around: let preview complete.

A great program to produce proof sheets is called "Thumbs Plus" made by Cerious software, I believe. Has very good flexibilty in output options - you can include file name, size, pixel dimensions. You can select the size and spacing of the proof sheet images. You can also output the file to a printer or output it to a raster image, if you would like it printed on real photographic paper. Take your file and have it printed on your local digital minilab. Works much better than the proof sheet function in photoshop 5.5.

Excellent Software that can be used non-interactively with command line in Batch file.

<br><br>

It makes it a very powerfull tool with script generated batch file in <A href="http://www.cygwin.com" target="bl">CYGWIN</a>.

 

You can configure very precisely your contact sheets, and do a lot of more stuff...

<br><br>

Available for Windows and CygWin.

<br>

And best of all it's a completely Free Software !

<br><br>

<a href="http://www.imagemagick.org/" target="bl">ImageMagik</a>

<br>