merging contact sheets into each other

[topdude]

i have about 5,000 of the best images scanned in from a library of 50,000 slides (35 mm film). as time goes, more and more images will be scanned in, so the 5,000 will increase as the need dictates.

the current 5,000 scans are stored in about 50 different CDs, about 4-100 image per CD (20-150 MB/image), in different resolution, and different file formats (TIFF, PCD, JPG). also the 5,000 images are "random" representation of the 50,000 slides, so their file numbers (=slide numbers) are not continous. the original library is numbered simply from 1-50,000.

i want to create a contact sheet of all of the scanned images. this contact sheet must:

- contain the thumbnail and the filenumber (=slidenumber), without the file extension
- be easily updatable, so if new scans made, they can be added without a hassle
- images must be consecutively ordered by their filenumber (=slidenumber), even as they are randomly distribuuted now in different CDs

of course, this would be a multipge contact sheet, kind of a booklet representaion of the best and alread-digitaly-available slide images.

how can i do this? some immediate problems:
- i can not create a folder equal with 50 CDs so thumbnails can be displayed all at once.
- can somehow store ONLY the thumbnail images (small file size) and create contact sheet from that?
- how would i add new thumbnails that will be scanned in later, including placement to the right location according to filenumber?

any suggestion?

all the best.

[helmut]

Sounds difficult to me. This will possibly need nconvert and scripting.

Before putting more thoughts into this I made a basic calculation:
Square root of 5000 is ~71. So the contact sheet would contain thumbnails of 71 x 71 images. Each thumbnail needs about 100 pixel (thumbnail & filename), makes a contact sheet of 7100 x 7100 pixels. An 7100 x 7100 pixel image will have about 50 Megapixel and be about 144 MB (50 Megapixel * 3 Bytes) in RGB colours.
That's not too bad.

Now all that is left is to find a way to create this contact sheet.

[topdude]

re: merging contact sheets...

i am desperately looking for a way to save thumbnail images (=small file image representations of large file photos) for the purpose of merging into each other - as slides are scanned in, new thumbnails added to the existing multipage contact sheet, according to their filename numbers.

this will create an ordered image library of original slide films that are available in digital format - can be used to browse my own collection, can be posted to the web, sent to clients, etc...