PUBLICATION CENTER

By Kim Herrera

I love these automated tasks, and you will too. In order to view all of them you must have at least one image open. Go to File>Automate.

 You will notice a submenu of available features. This is like a secret treasure chest to most photographers who are still finding their way around Photoshop. Contact Sheet and Picture Package seem to be among the favorites, so we’ll touch on these for now.

For my sample I chose a head shot from 2003 of my oldest son, Vince. We're going to build a quick picture package of Vince. Go to File>Automate>Contact Sheet. The Picture Package window comes up.

You'll notice several choices come up for the Source, the Document Size, and Label options.

Since we already have a head shot open, let's use Frontmost Document as our Source. For the Page Size let's choose 8x10 (which will actually print on a letter-size sheet on my printer). I chose a layout with two 4 x 5s, two 2.5s, and four 2 x 2.5s. For now I left the Label options off. Don't hit OK yet!

Now you have a really cool option at your disposal; you can replace one or all of the images on your Picture Package. Just click on any of the images (or you can click on Edit Layout). As you can see, I switched out the bottom left 4x5 of Vincent and added a different version of him in a colored shirt. Hit OK, and you’re ready to print.

Now let's use the second automated feature that photographers find very useful, Creating a Contact Sheet. For this you don't need to have any images open, though you can have images selected in your browser or Bridge. You will have the option of browsing to select an entire folder. Go to File>Automate>Contact Sheet.

 The options for building the contact sheets are indicated. I always recommend using filenames as captions, because your client may say they “like the third one down on the left” and you'll have a mess on your hands. It has been my experience with Photoshop on a Mac that the naming convention sometimes truncates after 30 characters, so remember this when you're capturing.

Once you hit OK, Photoshop will build the contact sheet. If you’re showing this to your client to make their picks from, you definitely need to save it for future reference. You can print hard copies, but for me as of late, the trend has been to save these contacts as a PDF and email them to the client. It works out well for them because they can forward them to others who need to view it and they have the options in Acrobat to zoom in or out or add notations. Contact sheets are also useful as a billing reference and I tend to save them with the job.

Kim Herrera, Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop CS, is the color management expert for Logan Photography at Studio Exchange, Santa Ana, Calif., and runs KCH Digital, a digital artistry, education, and consultancy firm.