Producing a 'Ring Around' for Fine Tuning Prints

[Ducamantova]

Back in the days when Men was Men and cameras were Film, I would produce 4 prints (of the whole image) onto a 10x8 sheet using (for B&W) different exposures and / or Contrast settings.  In colour, I'd do the same for different filter settings.  This meant I could assess all areas of the print itself and make decisions about the final print. 

Until recently, I'd do the same in Photoshop, using the 'Contact Sheet' facility, which no longer exists in CS5. So, I've ended up having to do it manually, which takes far too long.  I'm doing this in order to be able to assess prints at home and from a Lab (e.g. for Wedding Albums) and 'fine tune' the final prints.  Modern backlit screens are wonderful to look at, but they do make it that bit harder to 'train the eye' and match them to the final Prints - at least for me !  I've got Jeff Schewe's book in Digital printing and it touches on this subject.

Does anyone have any tips about how to do this ('Variations' only works on screen) - ideally, an Action / Droplet in Photoshop would be so much quicker / more efficient (or a Preset in Lightroom ?).

Thanks for your help,

Mungo

[hugowolf]

The contact sheet feature still exists, it was moved into Bridge, but I don't know if it does what you want.

It is easy enough to create presets in Lr, then create as many virtual copies as you need, apply a different preset to each, and print them on the same sheet.

Brian A

[Ducamantova]

Brian,

Thanks very much for your help.  For some reason, the help facility within Photoshop CS5 didn't give me any information on Contact Sheet.  When I Googled it, I found a link to the Adobe website which allowed me to download it and 'drag and drop' it, so that it appears under 'Automate'.  I've no idea why they removed it !  The crucial thing is it prints the file names automatically with the pictures .

Cheers,

Mungo

[hugowolf]

Thanks very much for your help.  For some reason, the help facility within Photoshop CS5 didn't give me any information on Contact Sheet.  When I Googled it, I found a link to the Adobe website which allowed me to download it and 'drag and drop' it, so that it appears under 'Automate'.  I've no idea why they removed it !  The crucial thing is it prints the file names automatically with the pictures .

Lightroom will do file names on cantact sheets too.

Brian A

[langier]

Contact Sheet stayed 32 bit in Photoshop CS5 and later was updated along with portrait package when CS6 came out. Even running from Bridge, you had to set CS5 to open in 32 bit. I kept both CS4 and CS5 running at the same time for that very reason. It works fine now in CS6 and great in Bridge where you can easily choose & pick the images for the sheet and rearrange them.

Contact Sheet II also lets you save your grid/page presets now, another nice feature.

[Ducamantova]

Right !! I'll need to learn how to do that in Lightroom, then !! Cheers.

[Ducamantova]

Larry,
Thanks for the details about PS. Hopefully, they won't have messed around with it again in the Cloud version !!  Cheers