GETTING REAL |
11
Multiple subjects
Many photos have a single subject. A photo of an engine with-
out anything in the background would obviously be filed with
either other photos of the same engine or with engines in the
same class. But what about a photo with a main subject but
another, sometimes more interesting, subject in the back-
ground? In the “old days” before I began scanning my collec-
tion, I tried different ways to keep track of photos with multiple
subjects. I initially added fields in my database for secondary
subjects with the idea that I could search the database on these
additional fields. That worked but was cumbersome.
But the real solution became available once I began scanning
my photo collection. Now it was easy to have the same photo
in the primary folder but also saved in other folders. I no longer
needed to remember that a photo of a locomotive at Merced
included a portion of one of the YV’s elusive ballast cars.
Instead, that scrapped engine photo is also in the same folder
as other photos of the ballast cars.
Contact sheets
As I completed scanning all of the photos for each subject, I
used a nifty tool in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements to cre-
ate contact sheets for each folder.
While I use Photoshop for all my photo manipulation needs,
Photoshop Elements is an inexpensive version of the program,
and will do everything you need to do. The following descrip-
tion is based on using Photoshop Elements 6. Menu items
might be slightly different in newer versions of the program.
In Photoshop Elements, click on File and then Automate/
Contact Sheet. A dialog box lets you choose the layout of the
