GIMP Contactsheet plugin

What is contactsheet?

Download section

Known problems and limitations

1. Strange characters (ie ñ, ü, ô or á, etc, etc.) in the filename will not be recognized and gives an error. Plugin stops. Solution: rename the files.
2. Printing with GIMP (windows version) gives a rightshift of the contactpage for unknown reasons. Use Gutenprint plugin instead. This is not directly related to the contact sheet plugin. Remember contactsheet print option uses only the standard printerdriver from Gimp not Gutenprint.
3. You will get a runtime error if an image file is not an image. The user should be aware that all his/hers imagefiles are really imagefiles (ie with the right extensions) recognized by GIMP, if not the plugin stops.

Version history

1. Added .bmp support.
2. Updated Dutch language pack v1.3.
3. Updated localization file.

1. Added simple printing capabilities. You have to experiment with your printer for the best results. Very important: the plugin uses the default Gimp builtin printer driver (will be changed in future releases). Unfortunatly I cannot set any of the parameters (pagesize, margin, etc) you have to set the parameters of your printer first :(. Set margins in your printerdriver to zero and choose your correct papersize.
2. Added .ps/.eps support. The special .ps/.eps version of contactsheet has been removed. Remember to add ghostview/ghostscript to GIMP if you want to select an .eps/.ps type image otherwise contactsheet refused to work. For this reason selecting "all registered types" in imagetypes will exclude .ep/.eps types of images.
3. FIXED: "Under certain conditions it was possible that not all possible rows were placed on contactsheet". Problem has been solved.
4. Code has been partly rewritten.

1. FIXED: "It is possible that not all possible rows are placed on the contactsheet. These rows are placed on the next contactsheet." A miscalculation has been corrected. It was only visible when a large number of images per row was choosen without the filename option.
2. Margin round the image can now be changed in tenth of a mm.
3. Maximum number of images per row has been increased to 256.
4. Maximum number of rows has been increased to 256.
5. Maximum number of DPI has been increased to 1000.

1. A little 'error' (a testlog command has not been set to off) has been corrected, nothing else has been changed. Look for "../tmp/gimp.log" on your system, delete this file.

1. FIXED: "Set topmargin at least 5 mm otherwise contactsheet page will not be visible." Topmargin can now be as low as possible. It is the user responsebility to take care of the printable margin. For instance my printer (HP CP1700d) the left-right margin should be set at least 5mm otherwise that part of the image wil not be printed.
2. FIXED: "Textfile (if option is checked) is not emptied wih each batch run so it will grow to infinity. You have to manually empty/delete this file." Textfile is now emptied before information is written.

1. Margin round the image can now be changed from zero on.
2. Added "sorted images" as option.
3. Updated Dutch language pack to v1.2.
4. Updated localization file.
5. FIXED: "Files with an extension .j .jp .jpe .p .pc .t .ti .x .xc .pn , will be seen as images. If it is not a imagefile the plugin stops. Remove/move/rename all files with those extensions." It is not longer necessary to remove these files.

1. Margin round the image can now be changed.
2. Font size can now be choosen. Be aware that fontsize automatically will be scaled down to fit the image width.
3. Added .XCF support.
4. Added a choice to save a text filelist from the printed images with the directory name where the image is located. Useful if you have a lot of images in several directory's. Name is the same as the contactpage name but with the .TXT extension.
5. Code has partly been rewritten.

1. Dutch language pack added.

1. Now possible to make contactsheet of a whole directory including subdirs.
2. Two radiobuttons replaced by option buttons.
3. Added several paperformats, including lettersized papers.
4. Images are sorted in the way the systems sort the images.
5. Added extension in the filename.
6. Added support for pcx format.
7. Added making contactsheets of all registered formats in one batch.
8. Number of rows is now limited to paperheight (automatic scaled down if necessary).
9. Images are automatically scaled and symmetrically placed within square minipages.
10. Contactsheet modified to work also on Gimp version 2.6.

1. Robin has made his final release of contactsheet only working up to Gimp version 2.4.

Installation notes

Windows users

• Windows XP pro SP3
• GIMP v2.6.6 and 2.6.7
• Python version 2.6.2c1 (r262c1:71369, Apr 7 2009, 18:44:00) or
  Python 2.6.2 (r262:71605, Apr 14 2009, 22:40:02)
• pygtk-2.12.1-3.win32-py2.6
• pygobject-2.14.2-2.win32-py2.6
• pycairo-1.4.12-2.win32-py2.6

• First install Python -> restart
• Install pygtk, pygobject, pycairo -> restart
• (Re)install GIMP
• Install language pack (contactsheet.mo) in the GIMP locale directory ([drive]:\Program Files\GIMP-2.0\share\locale\[your language dir]\contactsheet.mo
• Install your plugin in: [drive]:\Documents and Settings\[user]\.gimp-2.6\plug-ins\contactsheet.py. The plugin is now only available for you.
• It's possible that you have to set your LANG environment system variable. Open control panel -> system -> system properties -> environment Variables -> add system variables: LANG with value [your language code] (mine is 'nl').

LINUX users

• Install python
• Copy the script contactsheet.py to /home//.gimp-2.6/plug-ins/
• make the script executable with chmod +x /home//.gimp-2.6/plug-ins/contactsheet.py
• Translations, not certain how to do this with linux yet, will update when figured out.

MAC users

To Do

• DONE: Batch printing capabilities
• A solution for strange characters in the filename. This as a reaction on the remark: I guess it is a codification problem. ¿should it be in utf-8 and not ansi?
• A German translation file: help will be grateful
• DONE: Fixing missing rows (see problems). It seems there is a miscalculation in the number of possible rows.
• DONE: Increasing number of fotos per row, the number of rows and a more accurate white margin round the fotos
• Other dialogue interface to overcome the problem with small screens and make room for other options like aspect ratio and crop. In my photoprint plugin those options are already included, see at the bottom of this page.
  A first impression of the new dialogue interface. It's not implemented yet, it is a design idea.

Contact information

Prerelease batch photoprint