Automatic contact sheets + extra info?
January 18, 2010 7:52 AM   Subscribe

I'm looking for a program (OS X, must be 10.5.8-compatible with my oldtimey work computer) that will generate contact sheets of photos and it must print the file name under each photo and allow for a title to be entered on top (ex. Marcy Building Site Visit 1/13/2010). Right now, my work computer has iPhoto 5 and Photoshop Elements 3 on it. PE can do everything except auto-add a title. Is there anything that can do all of this AND run on this crotchety eMac?
posted by stefnet to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)
 
If you have the capability to run Windows (via Parallels, or whatever), the freeware Fastone Image Viewer 4.0 will do what you want. Also, CompuPic Pro will too, but it's another Windows program, and not free.
posted by imjustsaying at 8:25 AM on January 18, 2010


Adobe Lightroom has the ability to generate and print contact sheets which can include various bits of extra information, including filename and a Custom Text field. However, I do not know if the templates can be tweaked to allow you to put information above and below each image.

The Minimum requirements for Lightroom 2 are here. If your eMac can handle it, I suggest downloading the free trial and playing with it to see if it can meet your needs.
posted by zarq at 8:25 AM on January 18, 2010


Also, regarding Lightroom... if you do happen to download it and need help finding the area in the Contact Sheet Template options where you can custom enter text, feel free to MeMail me. The program's pretty intuitive, but it took me a little while to figure out that particular feature.
posted by zarq at 8:37 AM on January 18, 2010


Response by poster: I should have added that the eMac does not have an Intel processor, so installing Windows easily on here is not an option.
posted by stefnet at 9:14 AM on January 18, 2010


Not sure if it would work with PSE (I suspect not), but there's always the old Contact Sheet II plugin (for earlier versions of Adobe Photoshop). All versions of Adobe's Creative Suite also include the Bridge application, although I don't think it's available as a standalone.
posted by jessemellon at 9:59 AM on January 18, 2010


Photo Mechanic should be able to do this.
posted by dantekgeek at 10:34 AM on January 18, 2010


Aw crap. I had an applescript to do this but I don't think I can recover it. Also, it required either Quark or InDesign. Point being, if you're comfortable with Applescript, or a quick study, that might be the way to go.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:00 AM on January 19, 2010


In iPhoto '09 you can do it by making a contact sheet and then add text. Another solution is to make an export to html in iPhoto and then print to PDF or simply just print. That should be standard even in iPhoto '05.
posted by KimG at 7:27 AM on January 20, 2010


In iPhoto '09 you can do it by making a contact sheet and then add text. Another solution is to make an export to html in iPhoto and then print to PDF or simply just print. That should be standard even in iPhoto '05.

I don't see a reason to pour out several hundred dollars for stuff that you can do for free here. (that goes for a lot of things that people think you need to have Photoshop for ;-) )
posted by KimG at 7:28 AM on January 20, 2010


Can iPhoto '09 run on her computer, though? I know the installer refuses to run on an older flatscreen iMac at my office, even though the machine is running 10.5.
posted by zarq at 10:06 AM on January 20, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks everyone... It looks like there isn't really a good solution here. Shelling out big bucks is not an option for this and I'm also trying to avoid making a contact sheet and adding text (which is what I'm doing now and is really tedious when doing a bunch of sheets at a time). Exporting to HTML from iPhoto comes close, but is still kind of fiddly.

Thanks all! If someone wants to make a small utility to do this very task, I will gladly test it for you ;)
posted by stefnet at 6:09 PM on January 22, 2010


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