Creating a Contact Sheet for Your CD

All right, your CD of "digital negatives" is burned and it's time to get to work, but before you go any further, you can save yourself a lot of time and frustration down the road if you create a CD-jewel-box-sized contact sheet now. That way, when you pick up the CD, you'll see exactly what's on the disc before you even insert it into your computer. Luckily, if you have Adobe Acrobat, the process of creating this contact sheet is automated, but if not, you'll need to make a few decisions on how you want your contact sheet to look by "eyeing" it.

Step One

First, open the photos you want to appear on your contact sheet in the Elements Editor, then go under the File menu and choose Print Multiple Photos (or press the keyboard shortcut Control-Alt-P). (Note: If you're already working in the Organizer, you can create a contact sheet from the currently open collection by going under the Organizer's File menu and choosing Print.)

Step Two

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Choosing Print Multiple Photos first brings up the Elements Organizer, and immediately after, the Print Photos dialog will appear. Along the left side of the dialog, you can drag-and-drop image thumbnails to arrange your images into the order you want them to appear on your sheet. Then, there are three categories on the right side of the dialog. Under the Select Type of Print category, choose Contact Sheet from the pop-up menu.

Step Three

Now that you've told Elements that you want to print a contact sheet (and the preview window shows how your selected photos would look as a contact sheet on a letter-sized page, which is its default size), your next step should be to specify the size you need your contact sheet to be (in this case, one that will fit in the front of a CD jewel case). To do that, start by choosing Adobe PDF in the Select Printer pop-up menu. Then, click on the blue-and-white icon that appears to the immediate right of the Select Printer pop-up menu at the top right of the dialog. Note: If you don't have Adobe Acrobat, this option will not appear, in which case, skip to the Alternate Step.

Step Four

This brings up a dialog with options for your printer (since we're printing to an Adobe PDF driver rather than printing the file out to a regular printer, you'll see the options for a PDF). Since Adobe didn't include a standard size for CD jewel cases, you're going to create one by clicking the Add button to the right of the Adobe PDF Page Size pop-up menu, which brings up the dialog shown here.

Step Five

First, give your new paper size a name (something like "CD Jewel Case") in the Paper Names field. Then in the Paper Size section, enter 4.5 for Width and 4.5 for Height, click the Inch radio button in the Unit section, and then click the Add/Modify button to save your custom size in the Adobe PDF Page Size pop-up menu's list of presets.

Step Six

When you click Add/Modify, it returns you to the Adobe PDF Document Properties dialog. Click on the Adobe PDF Page Size pop-up menu, and you'll see that your new custom size (CD Jewel Case) now appears in the list. Click on it to select it as your contact sheet size.

Step Seven

When you click OK, the contact sheet preview will now display how your contact sheet thumbnail photos will appear on your CD jewel case. (Note: The name CD Jewel Case will appear below the preview.) If you had more than one page's worth of photos open, you'll have more than one page of thumbnails (instead of seeing page 1 of 1, it'll say something like 1 of 2, or 1 of 3, and so on). To see any additional pages, click on the right-facing arrow button below the preview.

Alternate Step

If you don't have Acrobat, there is a hokey workaround (sorry, but until Adobe adds a CD jewel case option to this dialog, which had been there in previous versions of Elements, we're stuck with a hokey workaround). Simply choose a higher amount in the Columns pop-up menu in section 3. Try 7-8 columns, and then "eye" your contact sheet using the preview in the dialog. You're trying to create a block of thumbnails that will print no larger than 4.5x4.5", so you can then cut your sheet to this size after printing. With that set, move on to Step 8.

Step Eight

On the right side of the dialog, you can decide if you want to have Elements print the file's name below each thumbnail on your contact sheet. I strongly recommend turning this feature on because one day you may have to go back to this CD looking for a photo. The thumbnail will let you see if the photo you're looking for is on this CD (so you've narrowed your search a bit), but if there's no name below the image, you'll have to manually search through every photo on the CD to locate the exact one you saw on the cover. Believe me, it's one of those things that will keep you from ripping your hair out by the roots, one by one. Now you can click Print and your contact sheet is created in PDF format and opened in Elements. So, just go the File menu, select Print, and print your contact sheet to your printer.

Step Nine (or so you think…)

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This is more like a tip than a step, but a number of photographers add a second contact sheet to make it even easier to track down the exact image they're looking for. It's based on the premise that in every roll (digital or otherwise) there are usually one or two key shotstwo really good "keepers"that will normally be the ones you'll go searching for. So what they do is make an additional contact sheet that either becomes the front cover of the jewel case (with the regular contact sheet behind it in the case) or vice versa. This additional contact sheet includes a description of the shots, to make finding the right image even easier.

Step Ten

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Here's the final result with a two-photo contact sheet for the cover of the CD jewel case, after a regular contact sheet with multiple images was printed and slid into the CD jewel case behind it. To create this contact sheet, open one or two images in the Editor and create a new document that's 4.5x4.5". Press V to get the Move tool, drag-and-drop your open images onto your new document, and then press Control-T and then Control-0 (zero) to bring up Free Transform. Resize your images on the page, and then press the letter T to switch to the Type tool and enter descriptive text next to your contact sheet thumbnail(s). Now print your new contact sheet.