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How to Generate a Tiled Print. Two Great Online Utilities.
Have you ever taken a great picture with your digital camera and wished that you could print it out as a large poster? If so, then I have some good news for you. You can, and you don't even need to install any software on your PC. All you need is a standard desktop printer (laser or inkjet) and Web access.
There are two great sites that offer the ability to convert a standard image file into a version that will print as a multi-page poster. One is www.blockposters.com. The other, at http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/wizard.gas, is more colloquially known as "The Rasterbator".
Both sites work in a similar way. Choose a picture from your collection, upload it to the site, choose a few settings, and then download the finished poster as a multi-page PDF file that's ready for you to print. Both sites limit your image file to 1 MB, but this is actually not too much of a limitation in practice.
In each case, you can choose the size of your finished poster by specifying how many sheets of paper it will take up. If you're feeling brave, and you have enough spare wall space (and ink!), you can go for a really huge version that takes up hundreds of pages. Alternatively, if you prefer, you can opt for just 4 or 9 sheets. The choice is yours.
Of the two sites, the Rasterbator offers the additional feature of allowing you to crop the uploaded picture before generating the tiled PDF file. BlockPosters doesn't do this, so you'll have to crop the image before uploading it for processing.
If you like the concept of producing tiled prints like this, check out both www.blockposters.com and http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/wizard.gas to decide which one you prefer. The results from each site are startlingly different, and it's all a matter of personal taste. Images from the Rasterbator have a much greater "zoomed" look, and the end result is made up of large (typically an inch across) black dots, while prints from Block Posters have more of the conventional look of a large photo.
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Comments
I have made quite a lot of posters with PosteRazor. It generates a tiled PDF file with the size and overlap that you want. Overlap makes pasting the pieces together much more easy. In my opinion this program is a gem. It's a small freeware application and can be downloaded from here: http://posterazor.sourceforge.net/index.php?page=news&lang=english
There's also a Linux and OSX-version beside the Windows version.
Another program that I've used is Posteriza (http://www.posteriza.com/es/index.php?lang=en_US) but it isn't in development anymore and PosteRazor is better with overlapping.
Worth a try!
jms
Yes! That's the other one that I couldn't think of when I posted here earlier. Yes... PosteRazor... that's the one... it's very nice, too.
I was just looking at PC Magazine's Best Freeware of 2010 site, and it lists PosteRazor, and the instant I saw the name I remembered that that's the other one that I couldn't remember here earlier...
...so I came back here now to add it, and you beat me to it. Bravo!
Posteriza is definitely worth considering as well; and I didn't know it wasn't in development anymore. Interesting.
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Gregg L. DesElms
Napa, California USA
It is worthy of note that the Rasterbator (geez, what a name) site offers an offline version... a piece of software that you can install on your local computer, which accomplishes the same thing... and, in fact, has fewer limitations than the online/web-based version.
Interestingly, though, the downloadable/offline version imposes a limitation, and that's that with the offline/downloadable version, there's no cropping... much like with Blockposters site. Weird.
I've used all of these products... and two others, too, now that I think about it. The Rasterbator, I think, is better; and I personally prefer the downloadable/offline version. I always clean-up the image, crop it, sharpen it, etc., in PaintShop Pro first anyway, so the inability to crop with the offline/downloadable version poses no inconvenience... for me, at least. Others may view it differently.
Hope that helps.
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Gregg L. DesElms
Napa California USA
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