Photographers have made contact sheets for decades. It’s the easiest way to keep a photo session together in the fewest number of pages. In my darkroom days, I made my contact sheets by sandwiching the negatives with photo paper in a special weighted glass tool called a printing easle. The glass held the negs in contact with the paper, and once processed we had our contact sheets to review the session.
Here’s a color version of sheet film contact sheet I found on google images.
And here’s one of black and white 35mm negs.
There’s your whole photo session on one 8×10 page. It’s great for seeing the session as a whole and for identifying which images should be printed.
Enter the digital era. I have started sending contact sheets to my clients for review. The main reason is that by posting images online, it resulted in people just using the unedited images. I wasn’t getting paid properly for my session, and I had unedited pictures posted all over the internet. It didn’t present me or my work in the best light.
So I switched to sending digital versions of contact sheets. They were easily made in Adobe Bridge. The files were selected, the parameters described, and multipage pdf documents were generated. It was really easy, and very convenient.
So what happened?
Adobe took the contact sheet module out of Bridge. Eliminated it. There were some work around techniques spelled out in the forums, but with the most recent CC updates, no one could get it to work. I was using the old Bridge 5 version to retain the contact sheet module, but when I upgraded my Adobe Suite to add InDesign, they conveniently rendered my old version of Bridge unusable. It just won’t open anymore.
People have been protesting this change for a while so Adobe added a Contact Sheet II feature under the Tools>Photoshop. Select all the files in the folder and go to Tools>Photoshop and have the contact sheet generated. What’s the problem?
The problem is it puts each sheet in separate jpg files instead of one multi page PDF document. It no longer allows for headers and footers. So you’re getting a contact sheet with only file names for identifiers. This is a real problem for sharing documents and for storage and printing.
If you didn’t know already, I design beginner knitting patterns. I don’t have much out there, because I was using Photoshop as my layout program. The layers were unmanageable, and the look of the document was not good. Getting the pages into a multipage PDF small enough for digital sharing was also a convoluted process. That’s why I decided to upgrade my Adobe package to the full design package. I needed InDesign for pattern layout.
What I have since learned is that, if you want to make usable contact sheets you HAVE to use InDesign as part of the process now.
Here’s my work around for making usable contact sheets.
- I first make the separate files going through the Contact Sheet II process from Bridge.
- I save out each page as it’s own jpg file.
- I open InDesign and create a document with enough pages to handle the contact sheets. If I saved 4 files, I make it four pages in the document.
- I uncheck facing pages.
- I place each jpg on it’s own page.
- I make text boxes and type in the job and client info for a header, and I make a footer with my photographer’s information. I copy and paste those text boxes on each page. I’m sure InDesign will make headers and footers, but I haven’t gotten to that lesson in my Lynda.com class yet.
- Finally, I export the document to pdf.
Contact sheet straight from Bridge using the Contact Sheet II module.
I could not figure out why Adobe would remove such a useful feature from it’s Bridge program for the longest time. People want it back, and it never comes back with any of the updates.
I think I have figured out why. You have to purchase the full suite membership to have access to InDesign. So, if you want professional contact sheets, now you have to upgrade you package and learn the new program. Yes, it’s a great deal. Yes, you get access to incredible resources for $40 a month. But still. That’s going for the $10 a month photographer’s package to a $40 a month expenditure. So Adobe gets another $30 a month out of the photographer. I needed InDesign anyway, so I can’t really complain. Except that it adds a lot of extra time and steps to my workflow process which makes me unhappy.
That’s my work around for creating a contact sheet in Adobe CC that actually works. I have tried a lot of different things and this is what seems to work the best. I wanted the multipage PDF document, and this made the best looking document I could figure out. I hope it helps you. If you have a different solution, please share!
New and improved contact sheet by importing and using InDesign.
