The print dialog in Photo Mechanic allows you to print both contact sheets and individual proofs. You can also use variables to customize the captions on your prints, apply crops, and add watermarks. Choose Contact Sheet or Proofs and specify your options.
Proofs are similar to printing contact sheets, except that there will be only one image per page with proofs so you don't need to specify columns and orientation, but you can specify a watermark. As with many areas of Photo Mechanic, you can use variables to customize your prints.
Note: Windows users may see the Page Setup dialog before they get to the Photo Mechanic Print Settings dialog.
Printing Options
- Header: This can be plain text or a variable or a combination of the two.
- Thumb Margins: Set the white space around each thumbnail image. This sets the spacing.
- Thumbnail Title: Choose the text to be printed under each thumbnail image, this can be the file name or any combination of text and Variables. The variable {filenamebase} uses the file name without the extension for a more professional look.
- Title Line Height: Set this to one more than the number of lines you need for the thumbnail title text to make sure there is a blank line between the text and the next thumbnail down the page.
- Rows and Columns: Set the layout of the page in rows and columns. The number of pages to print are also displayed.
- Orientation: Three options for layout, we recommend you use the thumb’s displayed orientation in the contact sheet.
- Footer: Use text and variables to set the footer text or leave blank for no footer. “Page : {page}” will print as “Page : 1”, “Page : 2” etc with the variable {page} incrementing up by one for each page printed.
- Page Margins: Set the paper margins. Check ‘Printer Scaling’ to allow the printer driver to perform image scaling.
- Color Match to: Set the printer profile, or choose “No Color Matching” to let the printer color manage the printout. If you let Photo Mechanic do the color management, set the printer driver to No Color Management.
- Resolution: Set the output resolution for the print job. This is not the native printer resolution but the image resolution. The best results will be at settings like 240dpi or 360dpi. The printer output resolution should be set in the printer driver software as normal.
- Source for RAW + JPEG: If there is a RAW and JPEG pair, choose which will be processed to print.
- When using RAW: if you select RAW above, choose whether the RAW file is rendered by the OS or whether the internal preview is used (faster).