Printing Contact Sheets

The first printing style iPhoto offers is the Contact Sheet style, which prints multiple images per sheet of paper (Figure 6.3).

Figure 6.3. iPhoto's Contact Sheet style prints multiple images per sheet of paper. Titles are optional.

Uses for contact sheets:

• Contact sheets are traditionally used to look at a number of photos at once, which is handy for comparing different versions of the same picture, or for letting relatives who don't have a computer pick which photos they'd like you to order for them as prints.

• You can buy special paper for stickers or decals, so printing a contact sheet could be an easy way to make custom stickers. You don't have enough control in iPhoto to print on perforated or peel-off sticker stock, so you must cut out the stickers.

Tips

• Select Save Paper to print portrait photos in landscape orientation, thus enabling more photos to fit on a page.

• If you select only one photo and print a contact sheet, iPhoto replicates the photo as many times as possible on the page.

• See "Printing N-Up Photos" in this chapter for slightly different options.

• The maximum number of photos to print across the page is 8; that gives you 13 rows for a total of 104 pictures.

• For more white space between photos and a layout that doesn't print all the photos in landscape orientation (only when printing multiple photos), deselect the Save Paper checkbox.

• If you see a yellow warning icon on a photo in the Print dialog, try increasing the number of photos per page to print the photos at a smaller size.

Titles, Finally!

New in iPhoto 6 is the capability to add each photo's title underneath the image, which is key for making contact sheets useful (otherwise it can be difficult to match a photo on a contact sheet to the original in iPhoto).

To include titles on your contact sheets, select the Show Titles checkbox. You can also change the font and color of the titles using the controls in the Fonts palette; click Show Fonts to display it.