PhotoSheet
This software combines several separate images into a single image with a layout of your choosing. There are a number of applications for this, including:
- Print your own wallet prints at a fraction of the cost
- Create prints that are perfectly sized for the photo frames in your home
- Create simple collage images for quick scrapbooks or photo frames
- Create custom-sized prints for creative effects in scrapbook pages
Cheaper Wallet Photos
Save money buying wallet photos of your digital images. If you've ever uploaded photos to a photo printing service, you've seen the option for wallet prints. Typically wallets will be printed on a 4x6 or 5x7 sheet, and you can expect to pay a premium for this sheet. This is annoying since the paper used is exactly the same paper used for much less expensive single photos on 4x6 or 5x7 paper.
For instance one photo printing service I sampled when writing this page offers the following pricing:
- 4x6: $0.15
- 5x7: $0.99
- Wallets: $1.79 (a sheet of 4 copies of the same image at 2"x3" on a 5x7 print)
Whoa. Wallet photos cost 80 cents extra per sheet!?! So I originally created the PhotoSheet utility to save money - by pre-creating the wallets in a 4x6 image I can get wallet prints for as little as $.15 a sheet, which is a huge discount!
Good with your personal photo printer too: Recently I picked up HP's PhotoSmart 385 4x6 photo printer. This printer can generate a 4x6 sheet of wallet prints, but only if you're printing images directly from a camera card. Since I usually print from Windows, however, I'm lacking some benefit from this feature since Windows' built-in wallet printing only works on 8x11 sheets on traditional letter-size printers. Once again, PhotoSheet comes in handy.
Rotate and Crop: Images are automatically rotated and cropped to fit the 2x3 aspect ratio.
Fill a sheet with image or many: Give it a single image or multiple images to generate a sheet filled with identical images or a sheet of different images. The program decides how to fill the sheet depending on whether you give it just one image or more than one.
- If you give it more than 4 you'll get multiple sheets generated, one for each set of 4.
- If you give it more than 1 but not a multiple of 4 (like 3 or 6) you'll end up with empty space on one of the sheets.
The cool thing about this feature is that if you're sending out multiple wallet photos to friends and family you can save yourself time and rubber bands by sending everyone a sheet of unique photos they can cut themselves, rather than cutting them yourself and dividing up all of the tiny pictures
Great for scrapbooking
Support for variable number of images: You can choose to put 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, or 16 images on a sheet.
Make a sheet of 16 1" x 1.5" images: This is a great tool for the scrapbooking person in your house. Images this size fit perfectly in slide mounts (those scrapbooking enthusiasts out there should know what this means...)
Make your scrapbook pages more interesting: PhotoSheet gives you control over the size and layout of images for the scrapbook layout you're working on. Read more here.
Collage Prints
I have a 4x6 photo printer and several photo collage picture frames in the house that hold 4x6 photos. Sometimes I have too many photos to fit in the frame, and this software comes in handy for fitting multiple pictures into a single 4x6 slot in the frame.
- you can see what the sheet will look like
- you can rearrange the photos on the sheet
- you can disable rotation of individual photos.
Custom Layouts
A recent update added the ability to edit your own custom layouts. You can read about how that works here.
How do I use it?
Easy...
- Run the application from the Start Menu
- Find the image you want to make wallet images for
- Drag the file into the "Files" section of the application
- Decide whether you want a 4x6 image or a 5x7 image and click the appropriate option
- Click "Start". You'll see an hourglass while the program is doing its work.
- After a moment Look in the directory you dragged the image from. You should find a file called something like "PhotoSheet 4x6 (DSCN0944,DSCN0945,DSCN0946,DSCN0947).jpg"