Playing with Picture Packages

How to print multiple images on a single page

So the holiday madness is finally over and hey, if you do say so yourself, you captured some really great shots of family and friends. Or perhaps you even had yourself a wedding, like me.

Now you set about the task of cropping, adjusting, sharpening the photos, and the best part... printing copies for everyone. Sounds easy enough but with the price of glossy photo paper, you’d like to fit more than one photo on a page, and gads, what sizes should you print, etc. etc. etc. Super yikes.

If you weren’t one of the lucky, chosen few to receive one of those cool 4x6 photo printers, printing multiple photos for family and friends could be a daunting task. Luckily, there’s a command in both Photoshop Elements and the full-blown Photoshop, called Picture Packages, and it’s about to make your life a whole lot easier.

The hardest part of the whole process, if you're using Photoshop, is *finding* the darn command buried in the menu system. Let us get started :)

Step 1: In Elements, take a trip up to the File menu and choose Picture Package, as shown below. NOTE: In Photoshop, you'll need to do a bit more work and choose File > Automate > Picture Package. Makes sense but seriously, it could be easier to find. I digress.

Place your order!

Step 2: If you have the Soon To Be Printed Photo open, Elements intuitively selects Use Frontmost Document for you. If you don’t, navigate to it by pressing the Choose button at the very top of the resulting dialog box (it looks identical in either application). Select the page size onto which you want to print, such as 8.0 x 10.0 in, and then choose a Layout. As you can see below, there are a multitude of options, which Elements dutifully previews for you to the right.

Step 3: Next up, you'll want to input the resolution at which you’d like the photo to print. Remember, the higher this number, the better the image is supposed to look. Elements will automatically fill that in for you from the resolution of your document; however, if you're dealing with a high-quality image direct from your digital camera, you'll need to increase this number to at least 200. I happen to know that my color inkjet does a nice job at a resolution of 225, so that's what I've entered below. For color Mode, pick RGB unless you’re printing on a dye-sub printer in which case you want CMYK.

Step 4: Sit back in your chair, put your feet up and click OK. Watch Elements go! It resizes the photos and creates another custom document based on the sizes you picked above. Slip some high-quality, glossy photo paper into your printer and SHAZAM! You're a photo printing power house.

Have it your way

If none of the presets suit your fancy, you can also create custom layouts with minimal effort. Just click the Edit Layout button at the bottom right of this dialog box. This could really be helpful for you pro photographers out there. Just think of the possibilities for weddings and sporting events! And the best part is that complete instructions are waiting for you on your own hard drive. Sidle on over to the ReadMe.txt file located in Adobe Photoshop Elements (or Photoshop CS2) > Presets > Layouts, as shown below:

Until next time, happy photo printing, to you ;)