Conundrum, please help me solve it.

[cdp7]

I have a frame that is 11.5 inches wide and a height of 6.5 inches. I want to put a picture in it that is basically just a bunch of thumbnails. I want it to hold 195 pictures, 15 across and 13 down. I tried using ContactSheet II in Photoshop CS, but it wouldn't allow me to do that. I want it so that there are no borders around each individual picture, but I am ok with border around the giant jpeg. All 195 pictures are the same size of 3inches wide and a height of 2 inches. I figure that I can fill most of the area if I shrink each picture by a ratio of 11/45 I will end up with an image of about 11 inches wide and a height of 6.36 inches. What I want to know is what is the best way I can do this, and if someone knows a way that I can have photoshop do it automatically, or at least a good way to have photoshop do it for me. Thanks.

[graylady]

I don't have photoshop but I see 2 problems in your request.

The final tiny size of your pictures has a ratio of 1.53 while your original pictures have a 1.5 ratio.

The main problem I see though is the ram memory needed for this kink of project. Loading 195 pictures in memory plus photoshop plus the final combined picture means a LOT of ram (probably 1 gig +). Maybe reducing your orginals first in the 50K would help you. I tried making a similar contact sheet in Irfanview and this is the first problem I encountered : not enough memory even if I have 512Megs of ram.

You did not say what problem you occured in photoshop. Hard to help you without knowing at what stage the problem is.

Honestly I don't see the point of having pictures at .75" X .5".

Graylady

[martinphotography]

I would suggest creating a new document in photoshop at the final size that you want. Turn on rulers (control R) and then drag grid lines accross in 3 inch incriments and grid lines down in 2 inch incriments. Then drag and drop your photos into this document (already at the 3x2 size) and they will snap into the grid. This way your can move them around, etc.. This will take some time - but you could probably create a batch function to do it for you. I'll look into it. Hope this helps.