School Portrait Software for proofs

[quijibo69]

Is there software you can recommend for creating proof sheets for school photography?

Something that can create an order form/proof sheet?

[10megapixel]

Are you using a version of Photoshop other than CS4? If so then read THIS (http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WS42C3020A-DAD1-4f92-8014-012263F3A51D.html) If you are using CS4 then Adobe did not include Contact Sheet II command and you have to download and manually (http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4048&fileID=3767) install the function.

[quijibo69]

Thanks..... but........

I was thinking of some automated software that does the works...

I was trying to avoid using a photoshop template and was hoping there was some workflow software that I can dump a lot of photos into and it will spit out proof sheets/order forms.

I'm not trying to break into the school photography business... I do have a few daycares that I do pictures for twice a year... and it seems to be growing... I want to save myself some time from the current photoshop route.

[10megapixel]

Well I don't know about the order forms but the Contact Sheet II feature is about as automated as it gets. You simply choose the folder where your pictures are located that you want on the sheet, and with one click Photoshop puts together your proof sheet. Sorry if that doesn't help, hope you find something.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i199/laserbug/Untitled-SHEET.jpg

[Zansho]

Who do you use for your lab? Some labs will provide you with free software for school type stuff. I know Pounds and H&H ( I think? Maybe H&M? ) and Whitehouse all have school type proofing and they provide you with the envelopes and order forms and all that.

[10megapixel]

Who do you use for your lab? Some labs will provide you with free software for school type stuff. I know Pounds and H&H ( I think? Maybe H&M? ) and Whitehouse all have school type proofing and they provide you with the envelopes and order forms and all that.


Oh, I see what the OP is talking about now. Thanks for the information Zansho, I checked a couple of those out and they look like something I may try :cool:

[amfoto1]

Yes, I use Printroom.com and their free, supplied management software can be used to create proof sheets.

You can also just order proofs from the website and have them shipped out to you, if time allows.

However, I very much prefer the "Print" function in Lightroom2 and use it most of the time. It gives me more control and produces far nicer looking proof sheets.

I use Lightroom2 in conjunction with PS4 now. Earlier versions of Photoshop I used the Contact Sheet function, but that was slower and clunkier than doing proofs in Lightroom, where there are some default proofing templates or you can set up custom ones of your own and save them, using them over and over.

With PS/Contact Sheet, once the pages were created, which takes a while, you had to go back and print each one individually. With Lightroom2, you just highlight the images you want included, click print and it goes to work arranging them and then can send multiple pages straight to your inkjet (or to a print preview first, if you prefer). This is a huge time savings for me, since I sometimes have 25, 50 or more page proof books.

You can very easily choose how many images per page (rows and columns), then the thumbnails are automatically sized. Somewhere between 1 and 20 is typical. I most often use 12 to a page. This is very similar to Contact Sheet II, but has a simpler interface in Lightroom.

The biggest limitation with Lightroom is that you can't add a lot of custom set type to an image. You can create only very simple cover pages with limited fonts and sizes, and with the type only in certain locations on the page. If you have your logo loaded into the software, you can have that added to a printed page, with some options as to where on the page and the degree of transparency, etc. And, of course, you can have file numbers print under proof images. All this is perfectly adequate for nice looking proof pages, but nowhere near as flexible as text in Photoshop. I often still make fancier, custom catalog covers in PS, while Lightroom takes care of all the proof pages inside the book.