Photoshop, photo print, Print Photoshop, Print!

July 8, 2004 2:03 PM

Can someone please help me print multiple documents in Photoshop 7?

I have two documents, both created in Photoshop. Let's say they are the front and back of a brochure. How can I print these using the duplex option on my printer without getting up and turning over the paper in the tray? (I'm not lazy, but I will probably be printing to a printer in another location) In Freehand you can add a page to a document, c&p the other file, tick the duplex option, and away you go. I can't seem to find a way to do this, and Google is being stubborn. Picture Package or Contact Sheet II don't seem to be what I'm looking for - can I somehow merge the two? Photoshop 7 on OS 10.2.8. Thanks!

posted by dual_action to technology (10 answers total)

Best bet might be to just place the two pages into a page layout program. I'm nearly certain that older versions of PhotoShop didn't have any kind of pages model -- at least if it's in there I've never seen it, and I doubt that they have it in newer versions either.
posted by willnot at 2:07 PM on July 8, 2004

willnot is right -- Photoshop is not designed to do this. (Indeed, one could argue that there are several respects in which Photoshop is the wrong tool for this particular job.)

If you have Acrobat (not just the reader), you could export the two Photoshop files to PDF, combine them into a single file in Acrobat, then print duplex from there.
posted by jjg at 2:16 PM on July 8, 2004

If you export to PDF, make sure you export at a decent print resolution (not the standard 72dpi).
posted by thebabelfish at 2:27 PM on July 8, 2004

Curses! Ah well, it was worth a shot. Thanks anyway. :)
posted by dual_action at 2:32 PM on July 8, 2004

I don't think you get a choice about resolution -- I think Photoshop's export function will just use the native resolution of the image.
posted by jjg at 2:35 PM on July 8, 2004

If you drag both documents onto Preview at the same time you can duplex-print them together.

At least, it works in Panther, which had a pretty big overhaul of both Preview and the printing engine, so I'm not sure if it will in Jaguar, too.
posted by bcwinters at 2:47 PM on July 8, 2004

Thanks bcwinters! It almost works - I can view it like a multi-page PDF now, but it will only print the first page so far. I will fool around with it more, getting closer!
posted by dual_action at 3:04 PM on July 8, 2004

Since Preview probably sees this as two 1-page documents, you migh want to drag both onto preview, then export a 2-page PDF from that, then open the PDF and print that. Voila. Or send me the images & I'll make a PDF for you.
posted by luriete at 3:30 PM on July 8, 2004

Do it the Production Manager's way.

Yank the files into a layout prog (InDesign, QuarkXpress etc.) & run from there.

Don't start slicing cheese with a spade ;-)
posted by i_cola at 3:55 PM on July 8, 2004

Success! Exporting, re-opening in Preview and messing around with the printer features did the trick. Thank you everyone, you have saved my day!
posted by dual_action at 3:57 PM on July 8, 2004