Divide and Conquer: Print big posters on any small printer

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Product: Digital Camera Poster Creator 2.03
Company: SRS1 Software ( web)
Licence: Shareware
Platform: 32-bit Windows
Price: $29

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UNLESS YOU'RE a student at a large university which happens to own a "Large Format Printer", often used in CAD and engineering, and that they let you use it -often for a fee-, printing large posters and murals has been out of your reach.

Thanks to software like Digital Camera Poster Creator (DCPC from now on), you can split any large bitmap (from digital photos to digital art) into A4 or letter sized tiles, for printing with your regular desktop printer, and allowing you to assemble the big poster or mural later by using the age-old method of gluing pages together.

The type of printer you use is not an issue, any type of printer is supported: monochrome laser, inkjet, color laser, or solid ink. In fact, the program doesn't talk to the printer at all, just generates the tiled bitmaps that you can later print (even on a non-windows operating system if you wish so).

For my tests, I used PMView Pro, a windows and OS/2 shareware program, for printing, simply because I'm used to it, and I like the program's print preview and image-resizing options, that put you in control of exactly HOW are the images going to be printed. But if you don't want to spend money on another software, any other win32 graphics viewer application should work, like the popular Irfanview freeware.

Choosing what to print
Deciding what to print as a poster is going to be your most difficult decision. It must be a high resolution image. And by high resolution I mean at least 768x1024 pixels for every A4 or letter size page that you intend to print. That is, if you want to get good results without noticeable pixelation when the poster is looked at close range.

I found, however, that using PMVIEW Pro along with this program can give you good results even if the image is of moderate resolution (just resize it with PMView to 200% its original size, and make sure you have checked the "interpolate pixels" option, that doubles the image size while smoothing some of the rough edges). Don't expect miracles, tough. Start with a 2MP or higher photo if you want good results. 3MP and above will help you create great posters and murals. Depending on the resolution of the original and the number of tiles you choose, the program will display an estimate of how the resulting poster will look, like "Fair from a distance", "Good from a distance", "Excellent", etcetera.

For the tests, and since I didn't have any photos that would warrant being converted to a wall poster (not even the Expocomm 2004 ones ;), I decided to stick to one of my areas of interest: Dragons and other "Fantasy" drawings. By Googling around I was able to find this neat image of a 1980 dragon painting by Boris Vallejo, titled "Dragon Birth". At 1200x873 pixels, it had barely enough resolution for a decent "2x4" poster (two A4 pages as the width and four A4 pages as the height). I used the process described above with PMView to increase the bitmap resolution twofold, with pixel interpolation.

Then I put DCPC to work. As you can see in the screenshot below, the interface is very intuitive, while I admit the "Tile Size" section could use some redesign. You can be confused by the "tile size" expressed in mm and inches only instead of starting by the paper size you intend to use. The author was very helpful and friendly, and recognized the interface could put an emphasis on paper size rather than tile size, he promised to work on improvements based on my suggestions. In the mean time, do a test print and measure what is the printing area in your printer for a full-page image when printed on the paper size you intend to use for the poster tiles.

Once you select the image, it is displayed in the preview window, and you only have to select the "tile size" and begin to play with the "number of tiles" drop down values, to get the poster size you want. Every time you make a change, it's immediately displayed in the preview window. Once you're comfortable with your selections, you only have to press the "Save Poster Tile Images" button to get the process started.

The source bitmap will be cut into the appropriate number of tiles and saved into a sub-folder, on the same source path where the original image was stored. You can then click on the link on the information dialog to open the folder directly, with the bitmap images ready to print. You can choose the output format between TIFF, BMP and JPG, I choose BMP since it's a "lossless" graphics format, not to introduce any further quality loss due to re-compression.

The Results
I used a QMS 2350EN color laser -of which you will read my full review soon- and A4 regular laser paper for these tests. Your mileage might vary. Keep in mind that you also need a firm and flat surface, and plenty of space to lay out and work with the sheets of paper. Lots of patience and a good paper cutter are also a must. A decent paper cutter is needed to trim any edges your printer might include as default margins, even if you choose to print an image in the "fit page" mode. Only recent inkjet printers have the ability to print "border less" photos. A non leaky, solid paper glue of the "glue stick" kind helps, too. And you thought collage and gluing pieces of paper together was only a childhood memory!.

And here is the result, a nice poster of about 56x76cm (21.8 by 29.6 inches) hanging on my wall:

The Verdict
This is a little program that does what it promises, with a simple user interface, and the right -affordable- price. You don't see that too often. Recommended. And happy poster printing!.
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