Acting as a dutiful tech support helpline to my father Victor, I was recently posed this question regarding the printing of multiple photos on an A4 sheet:
Can you think of a way in which I could arrange an A4 page (on screen, and then printable) containing about 4 across and 8 down mini-photos? The photos would need to assume a constant size, so should expand or contract into their premade hole on the A4 sheet.
The finished product would resemble a page in a stamp album.
I did not have an immediate solution to this problem because whenever I want to print photos, I upload them to Photobox and receive them in the post a couple of days later.
However, Victors request seemed to be just the sort of thing that Picasa would do with ease. Being a Google program, Picasa is excellent at doing the basics and making them incredibly easy to do. (Unlike programs known as "bloatware" that try to be all things to all men).
Solution
I tried it and my hunch was right. Here is the laughably easy way to print lots of photos on one sheet of A4 paper using Picasa:
- Open Picasa.
- Within Picasa, locate the photos you wish to print. (If you cannot locate them, go to File > Add folder to Picasa).
- Select the photos you wish to print (Ctrl click them and you can select as many as you like. They will inherit a light blue border to show that you have selected them).
- Choose File > Print.
- Choose how many you wish to print on the page and then click Print.
If you don't already have Picasa installed, download it for free.
The trouble with Picasa is there’s no Mac version so, on a Mac you have to make do with iPhoto’s rubbish printing features. If you’ve got Photoshop lying around, though, it does something very similar and quite flexible. It’s called Contact Sheet II (at least in CS2) and it’s under File->Automate.
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Been using picasa for photos and it is great.
But what I’d really like to be able to do is print different size photos on one sheet to save on expensive photo paper.
It seems odd you can’t choose a photo size for each image and either have them auto-arrange to maximise use of a sheet of paper or allow you to drag them around to suit your needs. Any idea how I could do this?
Rey – yes, you can choose the number of photos to print on the page.
1. In Picasa, select the photos you wish to print (hold down the Ctrl key and click the photos). The selected photos will appear in the bottom left corner of Picasa.
2. Click the Print button.
3. In the top left, you will see a series of options for page layout.
Choose from 1, 2, 4 or 9 photos per page.
Done!
Jake,
If you read Ray’s post carefully. He likes to print different photos of various sizes on the same page and not many of the same size on the same page.
Thanks Ted. There is a feature in Picasa called “Collage” that enables you to easily print a group of pictures of different sizes on one page:
Choose from a variety of collage designs and drag images around to change the positions of photos.
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There is a problem with selecting photos from different folders – it doesnt work – images from the first folder get deselected as soon as you click on one in the next folder. There is a button centre left in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen – “Hold” – clicking that before moving on to the next folder will save your selection.
I dont share the author’s enthusiasm for printing with Picasa – you have to chose your images from thumbnails. Once you’ve gone to the print page, you can *not* change your mind and remove an image – you have to start from scratch. I much prefer Canon’s “easy photo print” – but suspect that only works with canon printers. “Collage” is super, thanks!
I correct my last post – you can view an image large, and then click the “Hold” button to select it without having to worry about losing the selection. Then move on to view other images at larger size and select as wanted. That helps a lot.
Thank you very much. I have been mucking about trying to copy photos into a word document! What a revelation. Leanne.
YES!! Thank you
I had a programme which allowed me to list pictures on the left -hand side of the screen, then drag them to the A4 page alongside, and then to change the sizes where necessary to fill the page. I believe it came with an old Panorama prgramme. which no longer works with Windows 8.
Is such a programme still available?