Life Poster - Photoshop Instructions :: Wayward Puppy http://web.archive.org/web/20060911092506/http://www.waywardpuppy...

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Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train.
-Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Life Poster - Photoshop Instructions

Mike Matas posted instructions on how to make a ‘Life Poster’ but sadly some of us are still using PCs and
can’t use his iPhoto wizardry. Well for those like me here are the instructions for creating a life poster using
Photoshop…

Step one
Create a new folder on your drive and copy 98 images that you want to include in your life poster to that
folder. Make sure that you are copying the images and not moving the images.

Step two
You are going to want all your photos in a 4:3 ratio so cropping will be necessary for any landscape photos
before you put your poster together. This is simple to do in photoshop, simple open the file, select the
cropping tool icon, enter the ration in the boxes provided under the tool bar then simple select the area of the
photo that you want – the election box with hold the correct ratio for you.

Step three
Use the “Contact Sheet II” tool (File> Automation> Contact Sheet II) to apply the following properties:
Use: Folder
Browse: The folder you’ve created
Units: inches
Width: 19.5
Height: 30
Resolution: 200 pixels/inch
Mode: RGB
Flatten All Layers: Check
Place: eitherway, whatever feels lucky to you
Columns: 7
Rows: 14
Use Auto-Spacing: Check
Click OK.

Step four
Sit back and watch photoshop do it’s magic. This is an automated process so the action is going to be taking
place on the screen and not in the background – each image will open, resize, copy into the poster document
and be places. No doubt this will take up a lot of your computer’s mojo so best to just let it sit.

Step five
Now it is time to add the side margins… Image> Canvass Size

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Life Poster - Photoshop Instructions :: Wayward Puppy http://web.archive.org/web/20060911092506/http://www.waywardpuppy...

Change Width from 19.5 to 20 and hit ok – this will add a quarter of an inch margin to each side of the image.

Step six
All set to save (TIFF is always good) and either upload to the photo processing site or take it into Kinkos or
such to be printed.

Sean :: Bookmark This :: February 09, 2005

Other people say…

You say...1 | On February 9, 2005, Arno said...

Hey Sean! Great work! Indeed, great minds do think alike ;-) I wanted to get more images in, so I did it quite
similar, but with a 9 columns, 16 rows, setup.
http://www.sindono.com/weblog/archives/000105.php

You say...2 | On February 12, 2005, MGC said...

Just wanted to say thanks for this...Tried it with the free trial version of Photoshop and your instructions
worked like a charm. Get to see the results tomorrow from Kinkos. Thanks again.

You say...3 | On February 18, 2005, tpmn said...

Do you need an expensive version of Photoshop to do this? Or will it work with Photoshop Elements?

Thanks,

Tad

Sean says...4 | On February 18, 2005, Sean said...

Yes, the only difference that I know about is that in step three the contact sheet automation is listed
somewhere different in the menu… still under the file header but under the submenu something like ‘print
layout’ instead of the automation submenu.

Other than that it should work in elements also.

You say...5 | On February 20, 2005, Noah said...

Sean - thanks for the info. I've gotten my 98 pictures onto the Photoshop contact sheet as above, but there's a
lot of white space between the images. Is there a quick/easy way to remove this, and have the pictures butt up
against each other?

You say...6 | On February 21, 2005, Noah said...

Ok, I "fixed" it. Problem was that Photoshop 7.0 doesn't allow you to generate a contact sheet without the
white space. I dl'd the trial version of Photoshop CS, and that worked like a charm. Off to Ofoto, and we'll see
what we get! Thanks -- N

You say...7 | On February 23, 2005, Jeff said...

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Life Poster - Photoshop Instructions :: Wayward Puppy http://web.archive.org/web/20060911092506/http://www.waywardpuppy...

Holy cow... Great job. Unfortunately I spent over 4 hours doing this manually in PS. I had to have it by
Valentines day, so I couldn't have waited until this was posted!

Mine turned out great! The only difference is, that I used guides and dropped 98 photos into place manually.
Since I did it that way, I had no white space between the rows which actually added a pretty slick effect.

You say...8 | On February 23, 2005, Roy said...

Does anyone know if/where the automation feature is in Photoshop LE?

thanks

Sean says...9 | On February 23, 2005, Sean said...

Photoshop LE was just the precursor of Photoshop Elements so check out my previous comment about that
and hopefully it will work (although I have never used Photoshop LE, so can't promise anything)

You say...10 | On February 23, 2005, Sebastian said...

yeah, the blank space is kind of weak. wish they all could stick together... btw do anybody know where you
can print it out at a low cost?

You say...11 | On February 23, 2005, Mike said...

http://www.elcocolor.com/hot_internet_only_specials.htm

You say...12 | On February 23, 2005, KG said...

I have photoshop CS and can't seem to create a contact sheet w/out the whitespace between picutes. How do
you go about removing the white space?

You say...13 | On February 23, 2005, guictx said...

I've been doing similar stuff using IrfanView wich is freeware:

1. Go to thumbnail view;
2. Select yout images;
3. Create contactsheet;
4. Adjust options to desired size of output.

You say...14 | On February 23, 2005, Rico said...

Excellent how-to; very concise.

Another good place to get one of these printed is a sign shop. Local sign shops are getting into digital printing
more and more now, and their prices or more often that not competitive; not to mention that I'd rather get my
awesome lifeposter printed by a graphic artist geek who makes signs instead of a monkey at the copy shack.
This one guy I spoke to at a sign place near me advised me on which paper I should print on (photo with satin
finish, btw) and after messing with the curves in Photoshop, made my crappy pictures look better.

I used ACDSee to re-size my photos to 4:3 first; most of my stuff was close to that anyway, and I could do a
batch re-size, which saved some time. My old roommate told me about a Photoshop-like program (Gyst, or
Gimp or something) that I believe was free.

You say...15 | On February 23, 2005, Kunal said...

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Life Poster - Photoshop Instructions :: Wayward Puppy http://web.archive.org/web/20060911092506/http://www.waywardpuppy...

Rico, the application is in fact the Gimp.

You say...16 | On February 24, 2005, mechagoomba said...

yeah, gimp is good. its just as good as photoshop. and the sign shop thing is right on, i got mine printed there
and it looks awesome.

You say...17 | On February 24, 2005, astro said...

does anyone know how Jeff (above) did the following? i'd really like to have the poster without the white
spaces. i'm a ps novice, so any help would be appreciated.

thanks.

>>>On February 23, 2005, Jeff said...Mine turned out great! The only difference is, that I used guides and
dropped 98 photos into place manually. Since I did it that way, I had no white space between the rows which
actually added a pretty slick effect.

You say...18 | On February 26, 2005, Tasker said...

Picasa2 seems to have a built in collage making feature that looks like, if you use the 'picture grid' option, will
make a collage with out the white space.

You say...19 | On February 27, 2005, isydoesit said...

In Photoshop- if you change the dimensions of the contact sheet (I did 19.35 by 29) it eliminates the space
between the images! Then you can change the canvas size afterwards to 20 by 30.

Sean says...20 | On February 27, 2005, Sean said...

Nicely done!

You say...21 | On February 28, 2005, isydoesit said...

Sean- Snapfish and Ofoto don't accept Tiff files, only jpg. Kinkos sucks. If I save to a jpg, does it suck away
some of the resolution?

Sean says...22 | On February 28, 2005, Sean said...

I saved mine as a high rez jpg and had it printed from Ofoto and there was no problem with the image
quality... only thing is it takes a while to upload but that’s not so bad if you just start it and then walk away for
a while.
So yes, JPG is the way I would (did) go

You say...23 | On March 1, 2005, Steven said...

How many pictures would you need to make a smaller one and what are some other size you can make.

You say...24 | On March 5, 2005, freeman said...

this only work's with PHSP 8.x, right?

You say...25 | On March 5, 2005, freeman said...

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Life Poster - Photoshop Instructions :: Wayward Puppy http://web.archive.org/web/20060911092506/http://www.waywardpuppy...

question answered.... thanks anyway :-)

Sean says...26 | On March 7, 2005, Sean said...

To the number of people who have been asking about how to do this with different numbers of photos or
different size paper:

The actually number of photos and size of the page can be anything, it all just comes down to math. The
reason that 20x30in is used is that it is a size that most places will print for you but any size can be used
Photoshop just works out the math of how to fit the photos in on the paper without distorting them.

The easiest way to figure out the paper size for a given number of photos is to take the square root of the
number of photos you have then use that as the height and width of the page. But what I would really
recommend is that you just play with the numbers step three – on the right of that window it will tell you how
big each photo will be and how many pages it will take. Play with the numbers until you get it down to one
page and without too much space between each photo.

But like I said before the 20x30 paper size is popular for this because places like ofoto will print it

You say...27 | On March 18, 2005, Tina said...

I followed the instructions provided by isydoesit, but I still have white spaces between my images. I am using
Photoshop7.

Sean says...28 | On March 18, 2005, Sean said...

I am working with Photoshop CS so this might be different - let me know if what I am telling you doesn't
apply. Isydoesit has the right idea, the easiest way to get the white out in between the photos is to play with
the sheet size in step three. Once you have all your info entered on the right size of the window it should tell
you how big your each of your pictures are going to be so all you should have to do it multiply that width by 7
(the number of columns) and that height by 14 (the number of rows) to get the page size you need for no
white space. Also, make sure that your auto spacing is either checked or your spacing values are set to zero.

You say...29 | On April 26, 2005, ayesha said...

I tried with Photoshop CS and for some reason, the

TIFF file created added filenames below each picture.
I am using it for the first time.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you
-A

You say...30 | On May 17, 2005, Jerry said...

Thanks for the tutorial, it's awesome..

You say...31 | On June 8, 2005, rachel said...

hey there...how much do you charge???I am totally illiterate when it comes to this and kinkos is charging $90
an hour. Its for an anniversary present and I have only 42 images...if you can't help me what would I change
for the amount of images, and can I do this whith Photoshop 2.0 trial edition??
Thanks so much=)

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You say...32 | On June 13, 2005, bhurl4 said...

Did you get the finished poster framed? If not, how did you go about hanging it? Very nice work and thanks
for the how-to!

You say...33 | On June 13, 2005, yuto said...

This project is a great idea, but photoshop elements isnt letting me take away the ginormous white spaces. I
followed guictx's idea in post #13. This is much faster than photoshop; it takes less than a minute. Just
remember to select all the images in the folder, click options->sort thumbs->no sort. Also set the image size to
4000 px by 6000 px (I think that's 20 in x 30 in with 200 dpi). I prefer the margins to be 35 px on all sides and
the spacing to be 17 px.) You might have to make some adjustments for it to be perfect, so preview it before u
print. thanks again to guictx.

You say...34 | On June 16, 2005, B_austen said...

Nice project. I have been thinking about doing something like this, but I'm still in the process of learning to
use PS elements for more than just red eye removal. I was wondering if you know of any way to make a
similar poster, but us the inidivdual images as pixals for a large image? I think this may be beyond photo shop
elements for sure.

Thanks,
Brock

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