I want to do that, but to make a giant picture by first splitting the image into parts.
I can do that with the new free Google photo product Picasa2.
So it would almost be like wallpaper. But it’s not all that cheap.
So, do big blowups work? Do the colors come out all right, or do they turn all pastel. And does the grain get in the way?
Would you do it again?
Just start rasterbating ! I haven’t used this site (no use for it) but I hear good things.
Have you actually checked prices at places like Kinko’s or at real photo processing places?
I already have the capability with Google’s Picasa2 to break pictures into pieces.
It’s the printing part I’d like to check.
Zebra -
If you have any experience with “places like Kinko’s or at real photo processing places” please let me know how it worked out.
I’ve done quite a lot of this for display purposes. Things to consider are the resolution of the original picture and the problems combining the individual panels.
As an example: If you scanned a postcard sized image (3x5 inches) at 600 dpi and blew it up to a 17" x 33 " poster you would get a nice picture if viewed from minimal distances (this would consist of (6) 8 ½ x 11 sheets of paper glued together). It’s tough to get the resolution needed for a whole wall from a print because the information is just not there. Blowing it up that large would show grain (as opposed to a high resolution scan of film). To give you an idea of resolution of film, Kodacrhome 64 slide film is about 88 lines of resolution. You can project this on a wall with good clarity. Today’s high quality print film has 100 lines or more of resolution. If you have the image of something on film then it would be best to have the original scanned at the highest resolution possible. This will give you the best image to work with.
I want you to think of the problems involved combining the image. You have to trim 1 side of a sheet perfectly and glue it to another sheet so the image has no visible merging. This takes time and patience. The more panels you do this to the more chance you run into getting out of alignment with another panel (paper stretches believe it or not). If you do this for a room size wall you will understand quickly what I’m talking about when you exceed 4 panels by 4 panels. It also gets difficult to physically handle.
Through trial-and-error I’ve come to the conclusion that solid glue sticks (NOT LIQUID) work best. Also, AND THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, tape the back of the joint with the thinnest 2" wide clear packing tape. Apply the tape when you’ve completed a row. This will stabilize the joint and allow you to handle the poster.
There are cheap programs on the internet specfically designed for making posters so you have choices if you don’t like the software you’re working with. I’ve used a program called Poster in the past and it seems to work well.
As a final thought, you can use Microsoft Excel as a poor-man’s poster maker. If you have an image that spans more than 1 page you can print it out in poster fashion. The odd benefit of this is that the pages will overlap each other so you don’t have to be precise when trimming them to fit.
Good luck with your project.
A few questions.
What is your source material?
Do you have a printed photo that you are going to scan?
Do you have some image off the net?
Do you have a digital camera still that you want to enlarge?
What resolution do you have the image in now? (if you have a scanner, what is the max res you can scan?)
How good is your home printer?
Just how big do you want to make it?
It seems to me that the quality of your printer and the quality of the digital image you are starting with will be the biggest factors in how good the image is going to end up. That, and if you like the ‘wall paper’ effect. Most home printers won’t do edge to edge printing so you will have to trim each image to put it together. Do you have someting to help you make straight cuts?
I do some graphic design work and I’ve have had Kinko’s make some banners that were about 6 feet by 3 feet. IIRC two banners were about $100. I’m thinking a simple photo would be less but the print job and quality was great.
I also sometimes have had a place called PSPrints (look online) make a ‘short-run’ posters. That is an 11x17 on good stock and they will do one for $12 plus shipping.
Can I enhance that question just a touch? Should be:
“Do you have a photographic print that you can scan?”
Previously printed material say like something out of someone’s bubble jet printer or that was printed in some kind of CMYK offset way will already have a linescreen that when blown up may produce unsual results. (E.g./ scanning a postcard or something from a magazine will yield less thanideal results. And may break copyright to boot if you don’t have authorization.)
(We were sent a scan that the guy swore was form a photograph, but blown up, there was a nasty moiré pattern that revealed itself.)
How big do you want the final image to be? I haven’t had any experience with pasting together panels of prints to make large posters, but I have blown up 35 mm film into poster-sized prints, and the results are acceptable (more on this later) from the expected viewing distances of about 5 or so feet away.
OK, how about some examples. This image started off as a 35 mm slide, which was then drum-scanned (very high resolution, expensive, and operated by professionals), tweaked in Photoshop, and printed at 300 dpi for a final size 28.5" x 28.5". If you get to about 3" away from the print, you’ll notice that the film grain is easily visible. However, at normal viewing distances what you see will be similar to this example, and though the grain is still visible, it is not objectionable.
Going back to the acceptability topic, this print actually went a bit beyond what I’d normally consider as the upper limit of enlargements from 35 mm film. Detail fanatics would accept nothing less than working from large format originals, but I ain’t got the equipment, so whaddya gonna do.
All this leads to the natural conclusion that the quality of your output depends much on the quality of your input (unless you wanted to be creative and turn the image into huge halftone dots or something), meaning that, if these matters are within your control, you should start with fine-grained film, good lens, careful focusing, proper exposure, and a tripod wouldn’t hurt. If you can’t be the one taking the photograph, then see if you can work with the original film. Failing that, then you’ll have to settle for a photographic print as the source, and scans made from poster prints are pretty terrible. Also, pro photo labs (look in the phone book under Photo Finishing, Wholesale) will likely give you better results and better service than consumer-oriented avenues.
A couple of years back, I took part in an amateur performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - for one of the scenes, I took a photograph of the actor playing Pharoah, obtained a high-resolution photograph of Tuitankhamun’s death mask*, then morphed it so that the facial proportions and features were those of the actor (but it still looked gold and shiny etc - I just morphed the proportions, not the image colour data).
I sliced the image into pieces using some bit of software designed for making fast-loading mosaic images for web pages, then printed each piece to fill a sheet of A4 paper. in total, there were something like 150 sheets (it wasn’t a rectangle because some sheets didn’t have anything worth printing on them), trimmed off the white borders, pasted the sheets onto a backboard made from hardboard (about 8 feet wide by 12 tall), allowed it to dry and cut to the outline of the figure.
It was tremendously effective - it was suspended invisibly in front of a royal blue backdrop, obscured by a backing curtain of pale blue and illuminated on demand by a light with a pale golden gel - when the curtain at the back of the stage parted and revealed a twelve foot golden face, there was quite a gasp from the audience.
My advice:
-if you’re printing a very large mosaic, sketch a map of the source image and number the pieces, then number the printed pages lightly on the back with a pencil (let them all print out and stack themselves in order) - you may think you’re good at puzzles, but when the pieces are large, the image somewhat fuzzy close up and the whole thing too large to stand back from properly, it’s harder than you might imagine.
-Print it with a colour laser printer; inkjet will bleed or smudge while you’re assembling it.
-Print on the heaviest, most opaque paper stock you can find and your printer can handle.
-Stick it to the backboard with wallpaper adhesive or a mix of this and PVA glue - PVA alone doesn’t have enough ‘grab’ to prevent the edges lifting and seems to get the sheets ‘wetter’, causing cockling.
-If you must use an inkjet to print it, stick it all to the backboard with spray mount (gonna cost ya) and press it down with a soft cloth, using a blotting motion - do not rub it.
*[sub]I’m aware this is the wrong context for the death mask, I just chose to ignore that inconvenient fact in preference of creating visual impact[/sub]
Here’s a web site that has prices for custom wallpaper-size blow ups. (I haven’t tried them, just searched)
BetterOnPaper.com
40”x60” - high gloss $100, mural wallpaper $117
Sort of competitive with murals ordered from wallpaper books.
For budget reasons I went with this place, splitting my image in four so the result will be 4’ high by 6’ wide, which should be enough to dominate the wall over my kitchen table. (At about $78 with shipping, I won’t complain even if it’s not exactly what I expected.)
I think you chose wisely. If you tried to print a 4’x6’ on a home printer you would have spent as much in ink and gone insane trying to assemble it.
I rarely exceed (6) 8 1/2 x 11 sheets and I almost always do it on a laser printer. It’s cheap and relatively easy to assemble. Anything larger or in color becomes an expensive PITA.
Be sure to let us know how it turns out.
OH and what is their turn-aournd time on a job like this?
Their Shipping Options says
I picked the cheapest postage, so that’s “7 business days” which works out to 11 calendar days because I hit two weekends.
I got nothin’ for ya. I just wanted to say that if you say your name really fast it sounds just like one of our admins?
I’ve had a couple of photos blown up to around 3’ x 2’. The results were fantastic, but my experience won’t help you at all.
I had just moved into a new house, and it was a mess - junk everywhere. I went to the camera store and bought the fastest film they had (B&W ASA 3200, which I took at ASA 6400). They turned out looking like a 1930’s crime scene. Everything came out really grainy and with massive contrast. Luckily, this was just the effect I was going for. I’ll never get anything as good ever again.
