How to make a photo contact sheet
Every photo from a shoot on one page, small, with filenames — for choosing, for filing, or for a client.
A contact sheet is a page of thumbnails. The name comes from printing a whole roll of negatives in contact with the paper, and the purpose has not changed: see everything at once and decide what deserves attention.
Step-by-step
- Add your photos — as many as you like.
- Choose the grid, how many across and down.
- Turn filenames on if you will need to find the originals again.
- Generate and print, or save as an image.
How many to a page
- 4×5, twenty images — large enough to judge sharpness and expression.
- 5×7, thirty-five — a good balance for reviewing a shoot.
- 6×9 and beyond — an index rather than a selection tool; you can tell photos apart but not much else.
Keep the filenames on
A contact sheet without filenames looks tidier and is much less useful. The point is usually to pick images and then go and find them, and "the third one on the second row" is a poor way to do that when the folder holds four hundred files.
Printing
Print at the largest paper size you have. Contact sheets are one of the few things genuinely improved by A3, because the constraint is always thumbnail size. If you are printing at A4, drop to a smaller grid rather than squinting.
Where the name comes from, and why the format persists
A contact sheet was once literal: a strip of negatives laid in contact with photographic paper and exposed, producing positives at exactly negative size. The point was never image quality. It was to see an entire roll at once, on paper, in order, so that a few frames could be chosen for printing properly.
That job did not go away when the film did. Judging thirty images is much easier side by side than one at a time in a viewer, because selection is comparative — you are deciding which frame is best, not whether a frame is good, and a full-screen view actively hides the comparison. Which is why the format survives, and why a printed sheet is still better than scrolling for choosing between frames.
Do not judge anything but the frame
A contact sheet is for composition, expression, focus and which of six near-identical frames caught the moment. It is not for judging colour, exposure or fine detail, and this is worth saying because a print will mislead you on all three. Thumbnails are heavily downsampled, so sharpness cannot be assessed. Paper has a far narrower dynamic range than a screen, so shadows block up and highlights flatten. And an uncalibrated printer will shift colour in ways that have nothing to do with the file.
Use the sheet to narrow thirty frames to three, then go back to the originals at full size to decide between them. Rejecting a frame at thumbnail size for being slightly dark is the one mistake worth guarding against — that is a decision the sheet is not equipped to support.
Frequently asked questions
Are my photos uploaded?
No. The sheet is composed in your browser and the images never leave your device.
How many photos can it handle?
As many as your device's memory allows. Very large batches take longer to render, and are usually better split across several sheets.
Can I include filenames?
Yes, and it is worth doing. Choosing an image is only half the job; finding the original afterwards is the other half.
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