How to create a contact sheet with ImageMagick

Contact sheets make a group of frames, thumbnails, or exported assets easier to review before handing them to another person or committing them to a project. ImageMagick can tile the images into one PNG so the order, spacing, and labels are visible in a single file.

In ImageMagick 7, the magick montage command reads several input images and writes one composite image. The -tile option controls the row and column layout, while -geometry sets each tile size and the space around it.

Filename labels help identify each source image, but they require a font that ImageMagick can load. Use an installed TrueType font path for -font when the default font list is empty or when montage reports that it cannot read a font.

Related: Create an image montage with ImageMagick
Related: Create thumbnails in batch with ImageMagick

Steps to create a contact sheet with ImageMagick:

  1. Open a terminal in the directory containing the image sequence.
  2. Check the input images before building the sheet. 
    $ magick identify -format '%f %m %wx%h\n' frame-*.png
frame-01.png PNG 480x300
frame-02.png PNG 480x300
frame-03.png PNG 480x300
frame-04.png PNG 480x300

    Use filenames that sort in the intended order, such as frame-01.png before frame-02.png. Shell globbing passes the files to montage in that sorted order.

    Related: Identify image metadata with ImageMagick

  3. Create a labeled 2-by-2 contact sheet. 
    $ magick montage -font /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf -label '%f' frame-*.png -geometry 220x140+16+36 -tile 2x2 -background '#f8fafc' -bordercolor '#cbd5e1' contact-sheet.png

    Replace the -font path with a font installed on the system. The +16+36 part of -geometry leaves horizontal and vertical space for padding and labels.

  4. Verify that montage wrote one output image. 
    $ magick identify -format '%f %m %wx%h\n' contact-sheet.png
contact-sheet.png PNG 504x460

    The exact pixel size can change with tile geometry and font metrics. The check should report one PNG file with dimensions large enough to hold all tiles.

  5. Open the contact sheet and confirm that every expected image appears in the intended order.