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