Convert scanned contact sheet to images

[Mark102030]

I have many scanned contact sheets (yes, from film) and I want to create individual images of each image on the contact sheet. Is there a script or add-in that will do this automatically?

[Jao vdL]

Not in Lightroom Classic. There are scripts you can find online to do this automatically in Photoshop which you should have if you have Lightroom Classic as the Classic subscription comes with Photoshop.

[Rob_Cullen]

Not Automatic, no script!   In Lightroom-Classic there is a 'manual' work-around to make each image frame visible in the catalog, and that is to make Virtual Copies of the contact sheet and do a Crop on each VC to show one image.

For a contact sheet of 12 photos you would make 12 VCs and crop each to one photo.

You can Export each VC to have files of each individual photo, BUT the quality will depend entirely on the image detail provided by the contact sheet.

[DS256]

I hate to say it, but you may have been able to do that with your scanner software.

It looks like there are some ways to do it with other software including Photoshop. See this Google search.

[KR Seals]

I can understand your need here. However, unless you just want to see each image as a kind of proof, the quality of such a small image is not likely to be satisfying. 

My project of digitizing thousands of negatives (B&W and color) has been helped tremendously by using my DSLR to photograph each negative. This can be done very quickly using a macro lens and the Nikon ES-2 adapter which holds a number of negatives in a carrier that you just slide through, shooting each one as quickly as you can reload the carrier. The part of the process that makes this work for B&W and color negatives is a Lightroom Classic plugin called Negative Lab Pro (NLP) It's easy to find with a Google search with instructions for use. The other necessary parts are usually an extension tube and bright light source.

[DS256]

Hopefully the OP realizes the quality will be less than optimal but my current scanning process is to create thumbnails approximate 600x800 so I can cull the images. Scanning can take a long time. While this creates a two step process, it allows me to load the images faster.

[KR Seals]

That is the point of digitizing through copying with a digital camera. It's far faster that using a scanner.

[Jao vdL]

And usually much better quality than a flat bed scanner. I was quite amazed how much more detail you can get from just photographing your slides directly. Only thing better is doing drum scans

[Todd Shaner]

The easiest solurion is to use Photoshop Automate Crop and Straighten  command. You can then do further editing of the individual pictures in LrC.

https://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/crop-straighten/

[Conrad_C]

Crop and Straighten Photos may not help in this case. Crop and Straighten Photos was designed to work with multiple prints arranged on a single flatbed scanner, where the space between each photo is solid white, and therefore easy for Photoshop to isolate and remove.

The problem with a scanned film contact sheet is that it is not a solid color between images. The film edges and leader can include frame numbers, text, bar codes, and other bits that were in the film. This confuses Crop and Straighten Photos. For one thing, in my test Crop and Straighten Photos returned inconsistent numbers of frames per image, instead of one image per frame.

Mark102030, there is one possible technique I just tested quickly:

1. Open the contact sheet in Photoshop. 
2. Use the Slice tool to draw a slice over each frame. Remember that you can use the Option-drag technique to duplicate selected slices, so one frame can quickly become six, and one strip of six can quickly be duplicated to six strips of six (36 exposures). And you can add Shift for a perfectly horizontal  or vertical duplicate and move.
3. Export using Save for Web (Legacy), which can export slices as individual files.

Here’s the thing: This might be scalable. For subsequent contact sheets:

1. Start with a copy of the Photoshop document you created above. 
2. Add the next contact sheet as the new top layer, at the same size as the previous contact sheet. (You can delete the old one.)
3. Make sure the existing slices are lined up with the frames of the new contact sheet; adjust with the Slice Select tool as needed. You probably have to do this each time because filmstrips are not in the same position in every contact sheet.
4. Export again, to a different folder. Now you have the images of the second contact sheet as individual image files. 

If you do this, it will help to go into the Slice Options of all of the auto-created non-image slices, and set them to No Image so they do not export. That way, all the images you get in the export folder will be film image frames only.

If you find a more reliable automatic way to do this, definitely do that instead of drawing slices. But if you don’t, using slices is one way to make it slightly less manual. I originally thought the Lightroom Classic cropped virtual copies was the way to go, but the Lightroom Classic crop tool is not efficient…for example, you can’t use the Shift key to constrain a crop rectangle move to exactly horizontal, which would help here; and you can’t zoom in while cropping.

[johnrellis]

Try the Divide Contact Sheet command of the Any Crop plugin.