How to Print a Contact Sheet So It Comes Out Right

A contact sheet that looked perfect on screen can come out of the printer shrunk, cropped, or with the bottom row of labels missing. Almost always it is one of four things: the wrong paper size, a scaling setting, a margin that is too tight, or the wrong paper. Here is how to get each one right.

Lay it out for the paper it will print on

A4 and US Letter look interchangeable and are not. A4 is 210 × 297mm; Letter is 215.9 × 279.4mm — slightly wider, and noticeably shorter.

• An A4 sheet printed on Letter paper has to shrink to about 94% to fit the shorter page, or lose its top and bottom.
• A Letter sheet printed on A4 has to shrink to about 97% to fit the narrower page, or lose its sides.

Neither is a disaster, but a few percent off every thumbnail adds up when the labels are already small. Build the sheet for the paper the person printing it actually has: Letter in North America, A4 almost everywhere else. Use A3 only when the sheet is going on a wall.

Print at actual size

This is the setting behind most wrong-size prints. PDF viewers and print dialogs often default to fitting the page to the printable area, which quietly shrinks everything. Look for the scaling option and choose Actual size or 100%:

• Adobe Acrobat Reader: under Page Sizing & Handling, choose Actual size rather than Fit or Shrink oversized pages.
• macOS Preview: set Scale to 100%.
• Browser PDF viewers: open More settings and set the scale to 100% or Actual size.

If the printer then complains that the page is outside the printable area, the margin is the problem, not the scaling.

Leave room for the printer's margin

Most home and office printers cannot print right to the edge of the paper. If your grid runs too close to the edge, the outer labels or the footer get clipped. A page margin of around 28pt — roughly 10mm — clears almost every printer and leaves room to write. If the sheet will be marked up with a pen, go a little wider.

Choose the paper by what happens next

If anybody is going to write on it, avoid gloss. Matte paper takes pencil, ballpoint, and felt-tip, and it is what most photographers use for proof sheets clients mark up.

Resolution, quality, and colour

• Export the PDF at 300dpi if it is going on paper. 150dpi is fine on screen and looks soft in print.
• Normal or standard print quality is plenty for thumbnails. Save the best setting for presentation sheets.
• Print single-sided. Marks show through, and a contact sheet is meant to be laid flat beside the others.
• Do not judge colour from a contact sheet. If the client is approving colour, send a properly made print. A sheet is for choosing frames.

Printing at a shop or lab

Send the PDF rather than images, and spell out what you want in the order: the paper size, print at 100% with no scaling, single-sided, and the paper stock. Print shops default to fitting the page more often than you would think, and a one-line instruction prevents it.

Checklist

1. 01Sheet built for the paper it will print on.
2. 02Page margin of at least 28pt, wider if it will be written on.
3. 03PDF exported at 300dpi.
4. 04Print dialog set to Actual size or 100%.
5. 05Matte paper if anybody will mark it up.
6. 06Single-sided.
7. 07One test page before the full run.