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One of the more popular Paint Shop Pro features is its ability to print multiple images. It's a great way to create album pages or make collages of photos to celebrate an event. You can use one of two ways to choose the pictures you want to add to a collection and to enable you to print several images on a single page:
- Use the image browser to select the pictures you want to add. Hold down the Ctrl key as you click each picture.
- Open all the images that you want to add to your collection. Paint Shop Pro automatically adds any open images to the Print Layout screen.
After you've selected all the pictures you want, choose File --> Print Layout. Your entire Paint Shop Pro window changes to the multi-image printing tool shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Composing a multi-image page.
The multi-image printing tool occupies the entire Paint Shop Pro window. To close it and return to the normal window, choose File --> Close Print Layout. Unless you have saved your layout, closing the tool discards your layout.
With the multi-image printing tool onscreen, here's the basic procedure:
1. Choose the page orientation.
Paint Shop Pro initially gives you a portrait-oriented page (with the long dimension vertically). If you want a landscape (horizontal) page, choose File --> Print Setup and then click Landscape in the Print Setup dialog box that appears. Click OK.
2. If you want to use a template for your images, choose File --> Open Template.
A template is a predetermined layout you can use to arrange your photos to save time. As a bonus, templates look nicer than dragging pictures helter-skelter onto the page. Paint Shop Pro gives you a dialog box with three categories of templates you can choose from: Avery, Combinations, and Standard Sizes. Click a category to bring up the following gallery of templates, as shown in Figure 2:
Figure 2: A dazzling array of printing templates.
• Avery and Avery International templates: Intended for the industry-standard Avery labels — sheets of precut stickers you can use in your printer. Yes, you can print stickers with your baby's picture on them! Each Avery template has a number underneath it, like Avery 8386; this number refers to the product number of a specific Avery label sheet, which you can buy at your local office supply store. Use the right sheet with the right template, and you have perfect stickers.
• Standard sizes: Templates in which all the images are one size: 5x7, wallet-size photos, miniwallets, and the like.
• Combination sizes: Templates with mixtures of sizes, generally one or two larger photos at the top and a bunch of smaller ones at the bottom.
Each template has a small thumbnail that shows you what its layout is like; click a template and click OK to apply it or click Cancel to escape.
3. Drag images, one at a time, from the left column to the page.
If you have a template applied, drag the photo into each of the boxes; Paint Shop Pro automatically resizes the photo so that it fits as best it can into the box.
If you don't have a template applied, you have to resize the photos manually. If the images are too large for the page, Paint Shop Pro asks whether you want to scale it. If you click Yes, your image appears with handles (square dots) at the corners that you can drag to resize the image. Choose No if you want to use the Paint Shop Pro autoarrange feature (see Step 4) to place and size the image for you.
If an image is rotated 90 degrees the wrong way, drag it to the page and click the Rotate Clockwise 90 or Rotate Counterclockwise 90 button on the toolbar to rotate the image.
4. If you haven't applied a template and want to position the images yourself, drag them into position.
If you don't want to use a template and still want everything lined up neatly, you can choose View --> Auto Arrange, which lines up your images for you sans template.
5. To print your page, click the Print icon on the toolbar or choose File --> Print.
Neither choice gives you a Print dialog box, but immediately sends the page to your printer. If you need to change any printer settings, do so before sending the page to the printer. Choose File --> Print Setup and click the Printer button in the Print Setup dialog box that appears.
If you're done, return to the normal Paint Shop Pro window by choosing File --> Close Print or click the Close button on the toolbar (the door-with-arrow icon).
 | If you're using a pregenerated template and Paint Shop Pro asks "The current template has changed, do you wish to change it?" when you exit, do not accept the default name if you choose to save it. (Avery templates in particular don't like being fiddled with — and, by just clicking OK, you're overwriting the template and potentially changing vital placement information.) |
Instead, if you want to save both pictures and layout, head to the following section, "Saving and reusing your template."
Saving and reusing your template
To save this attractive arrangement of photos, choose File --> Save Template. In the Save dialog box that appears, enter a name for your layout in the filename text box. Unless you tell Paint Shop Pro otherwise, it saves the layout as a set of empty boxes, forgetting which photos were there; you can tell it to remember the photos by checking the Save with Images check box.
To reuse this layout, reopen the Print Layout screen and then choose File --> Open Template. Select your template in the Open dialog box that appears.
 | When you open a template, it brings up the image in its current condition, whatever that may be. For that reason, be sure not to move any images to other folders or rename them because the multi-image print tool won't be able to find them. |
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