Proofsheet! v.78 (November 16, 2007)
Proofsheet is a Windows program that takes a bunch of pictures and lays them out in a grid, aka a proof sheet or contact sheet. It creates super high resolution proofsheets, around 300dpi, which is probably overkill and significantly slows the process down but what the hey, the results are good. The emphasis is on the output looking nice, as opposed to a super utilitarian contact sheet. It's trying to make something you might print out and put on your wall.
Support is available in the forum or via email, but try to use the forum first.
Here's a sample of the output, made from a bunch of pictures from The Photoboof at Burning Man 2007, click to see it full sized (warning, probably not work-safe):
I made the program because I wanted to print a bunch of pictures in a grid onto a button panel I was working on, and surprisingly couldn't find anything that did the job well. Here's the finished product:
A close up. Things look a bit grainy because there's a piece of plexiglass over the printouts.
Screenshots
Here's the main program window:
I think most of the options are self explanatory, but a couple of notes: checking "randomize" causes the pictures to be added in random order as opposed to alphabetically. And in the preferences menu is the option "Include Subdirectories", which makes Proofsheet look in subdirectories of the input directory. And there's also "Include Odd-Sized Pics", which makes Proofsheet include pictures that have non-standard aspect ratios, i.e. pictures that have been cropped. And "Create Text Files" tells Proofsheet to create a sort of map that details which pic is in which frame of the proofsheet.
Here's what you see while the proofsheets are being created. At this moment the picture of R2D2 being violated was being added to a proofsheet.
Features
- Creates multiple proofsheets if you have more pics than will fit on a single page
- Optionally will include subdirectories
- Can overlay the filename of each pic or can create text files that detail which picture is in which square of the proofsheet, which is a nice clutter-free alternative to overlaying filenames on the pictures themselves. Here's a sample text file.
- Can lay the pics out in random order
- You can set the width of each picture
- You can set the size and color of the borders
- Has an installer but doesn't install anything outside it's main program directory, which is by default c:\program files\proofsheet. That means that, if you'd like, you can simply copy that directory to another computer
- Free! Or more specifically, it's thriftshop-ware, meaning if you use it and like it you should send me something interesting from a thrifthshop. See the Help --> About menu for the address.
Current shortcomings
- Some computers might display the window at the wrong size. You should see the Start button at the bottom of the program window, if you don't there's something wrong and please email me and if possible send me a screenshot.
- The pictures need to be standard (1.3:1) aspect ratio or the proofsheet looks horrible. For now you can work around this by going to Preferences and unchecking "Include Odd-Sized Pics", which will cause Proofsheet to ignore those pics.
- It'd be nice to be able to set the proofsheets to be sizes other than 3300 x 2550 pixels, which they currently are.
- If your pictures are really big things can go really slowly. I should add an option to create low resolution proofsheets and also to bypass the picture preview, both of which would greatly speed things up when handling big pictures.
- Probably a few other things, email me if you notice a glaring issue or if you need Proofsheet to do something it currently doesn't.
Download
Note that Proofsheet is thriftshop-ware, meaning if you use it often you should try to send me something from a thriftshop. Send your interesting thriftshop scores to:
Proofsheet!
c/o Wrybread
498 Natoma Street
3rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94103
Updates
11/16/07: Version .78 attempts to fix the window size issue on Windows 2000 (the window is sometimes too short to see the start button), and adds the ability to create text files that detail what picture is in which grid of the proofsheet.
11/15/07: Version .76 fixed the filename overlay issue. Overlaying the filename should work now.