Digital contact sheet
 

Does anyone know how I can create a contact sheet quickly from NEF's (Nikon RAW format). I wish to allow others to review photos without spending hours processing lots on the off chance one may be used.

Stephen,

I do not know what can read NEF's and do that. Some programs can read the thumbnail but that is only 160 x 120. PSP8 can display that, but it is way too small to make a decision on.

Don

I have just done a contact sheet through epsons photo quicker but I had to convert them all to jpgs first.

If you use photoshop CS2 (I don't know about earlier versions) it can be done from Adobe Bridge direct from the RAW files.

Just select the files that you want in Bridge, (can be a mix of RAW, PSD, JPG etc) then Tools > Photoshop > Contact Sheet II (II sugests there may have been Contact Sheet 1 in earlier versions of photoshop) and you get a dialog box that enables you to select output page size & resolution, number of images down & across, rotate to fit or not, file name as caption etc and then hit go. I did just that at the weekend to produce 3 pages of 25 thumbnails from 75 RAW files (although it did take a loooooooog time with my poor 1Ghz processor :( )

Thanks for the information Gidders,

I never really got on with Adobe Bridge it seems a very bloaty program when the old browse, err worked. Now I have learned it can do useful things I want like a contact sheet, I am interested :). I have had a little go using the laptop but it and photoshop took all memory and complained after five images! I'll have another go with some real NEF's on the real desktop another time.

Worked a treat, it did take 40 minutes to labour the contact sheet with 24 images D2x images on and produced a combined image approx 6000 x 7000 pixels. I downsized it to a quarter and compressed moderately to be emailled. Images are perfectly acceptable for a viewing. Whats more as its a photoshop image it is possible to plaster copyright notices over the top protecting the work.

Once again, Thanks Gidders.

Stephen

Glad it worked.

If you are just wanting to email the result I would set the ppi in the dialog box to 72 - ie the standard screen resolution.

If you are wanting to print the output I set the ppi to 200 which is more than adequate quality for contact prints. That way you end up with an A4 sized image that is 1600 x 2200 pixels. You might find that the processing time is quicker rather than generating a 6000 x 7000 px output (but there again you might not cos I haven't tried it ;) )