P: Export your library as a contact sheet

Feature request: Export or copy selected photos as a contact sheet

Please add a simple Create Contact Sheet option to Lightroom desktop.

The idea would be to select any number of photographs in Grid view, or select an entire album, then choose:

Export as Contact Sheet
or
Copy as Contact Sheet

Lightroom would automatically create one or more contact sheet images containing thumbnails of the selected photographs.

Ideally, the user could choose:

• Number of columns or images per sheet

• Thumbnail size

• Include original filename

• Include rating, flag or other basic metadata

• JPEG or PDF output

• Image quality and overall dimensions

• Selected photographs or entire album

• Copy directly to clipboard

For large libraries, Lightroom should automatically create multiple numbered contact sheets rather than attempting to fit everything onto a single page.

Why this would be useful

Contact sheets are still extremely useful for culling, reviewing and sharing large photographic collections.

For example, I currently have an album containing more than 2,000 photographs that I want to review using an external AI assistant. Exporting more than 2,000 individual JPEGs is unnecessary and produces a huge amount of data.

If Lightroom could turn those photographs into perhaps 40–60 reasonably high-resolution contact sheet JPEGs with filenames visible, the entire collection could be reviewed visually while retaining a clear reference back to every original photograph.

The same feature would also be useful for:

• Photographer and client selection

• Portfolio editing

• Sending proofs

• Editorial review

• Teaching and workshops

• Comparing sequences

• Archive management

• AI-assisted culling and analysis

Lightroom already has the Grid view and generates the necessary previews internally, so conceptually this would be an extension of something Lightroom already displays very well.

Lightroom Classic can produce contact sheets through its Print module, and Bridge can also create them, but requiring another application defeats much of the purpose of the streamlined cloud-based Lightroom workflow.

A simple Select → Create Contact Sheet command directly inside Lightroom would be extremely useful.