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Last week, we covered building a multiple layer
snapshot page in Photoshop 6. But the folks at Adobe were
hearing our complaints about Picture Package and have improved
it in Photoshop 7.0.
Other photo editing programs have offered
printing multiple images on a single page for years. Adobe, with
Photoshop, has lagged behind, hence my two previous columns.
But no more. Photoshop 7's new, improved Picture
Package has several new features. But the big one is multiple
image printing.
The Picture Package interface is nearly twice
the size of its predecessors and features the 16 formats, enough
to gladden the heart of any school photographer.
The user may select a Folder from which to print
and PP will automatically fill the page with the topmost image.
This one can easily be ignored.
The bottom section is devoted to creating a
label. Since I had already written captions for my Easter images
in File Information, I selected Caption as my content source.
Big mistake. Photoshop inserted the caption in black over the
image and only used what would print on one line.
Far better to use the Custom Text feature and
append short labels. Even better to ignore labels altogether. If
the overprint feature persists in the shipping Version 7, I
would suggest choosing a large type size and white as the color.
As you can see, I chose the two 4x5's, two
3.5x5's, and four 2x2.5's format. Now here's the beauty of the
new Picture Package.
To insert an individual image into the format
frame, just double-click in the empty frame. This will send you
to the navigation window where you can select any image on your
hard disk. You won't be limited to images from a particular
folder.
Photoshop will resize each image to fit its
chosen frame. For instance, a long horizontal image will fit its
longest dimension into a 2x2 inch frame.
The minor problems in Photoshop 7.7b vanished
with the arrival of my shipping version. And indeed, I finally
understood the purpose of overprinting the captions: proofing to
ensure customers don't take them to a local one-hour for
copying.
The Help file even helps the user in customizing
layouts for Picture Package.
But Picture Package 7 represents a vast
improvement in features for photographers. And there's more to
come in future weeks. |