Poster images from regular 1-3 MB pictures

[Beequick]

I was wondering if there is a way to use either Gimp or Adobe CS to make a poster from a regular image? I know of the technique to print small sections and the picture past them together then to take them to a copy machine that can copy it to a poster sized image and it comes out pretty good. But I am really looking for either a pixelator that can "Add" size to the picture, or just a program that I can save my project and take it down to the local Map (Poster) makers and get it printed. I know having TIFF and RAW would really help......

I know of poster creator but has anyone had any success with that program? Is there any success stories out there? Please let me know....


Thanks :confused:

[John_Reed]

I was wondering if there is a way to use either Gimp or Adobe CS to make a poster from a regular image? I know of the technique to print small sections and the picture past them together then to take them to a copy machine that can copy it to a poster sized image and it comes out pretty good. But I am really looking for either a pixelator that can "Add" size to the picture, or just a program that I can save my project and take it down to the local Map (Poster) makers and get it printed. I know having TIFF and RAW would really help......

I know of poster creator but has anyone had any success with that program? Is there any success stories out there? Please let me know....


Thanks :confused:Last year, I created a poster that was 5' high by 14' wide, and due to its large memory requirement, I rendered it at 72 dpi. So I created it as a collage; I created a 5' X 14' "custom" sheet size in Photoshop as a base, placed one large panorama scene across the base, and then overlaid a whole bunch of photos, scanning some photos at 600 dpi, other digital shots as 2, 3, 4 MP images, and placed them all in the collage at 72 dpi, resizing as necessary just using Photoshop bicubic interpolation. I expected to see a lot of aliasing, but I surprised to see that it looked pretty clean, not really "jaggedy" at all. For a poster, you can relax the rules for fine photographs, since your viewers shouldn't be looking at it really closely, but even up close, this poster looked good. The whole thing was printed on a 600 dpi drum printer at a local digital shop. Another source of smaller posters I've used is (Fedex) Kinko's; you might check to see what they can do for you also. You can e-mail them digital images and they can print them for you.

[ZERO-D]

Use a mixture of Pixel Smartscale by Extensis and Photoshop Filters particularly in the "Artistic" menu to scale even a tiny web pic to GIGANTIC proportions.
YES YOU WILL LOSE RESOLUTION AND QUALITY BUT we can be a little creative and do quite well for ourselves here. The cutout filter can be amazing with scaled images. You can apply from super abstract low detail up to a very CPU intensive max detail (150 dpi at print size) and color level that will remain much like the original but will consist of individual "cutouts" of color. Basically shapes of flat color! Other effects applied very lightly work too! Play with it at low res first THEN move up to crunching on massive file. Here's a quick simplified process.
Save as .tif RGB
contrast a little, no big black areas or white areas, just a little umph.
Sharpen a little
Use Extensis Pixel SmartScale (free demo)or something like it. It can be slow so try on small sample first if needed.
Now in Photoshop use Filters/Artistic and try filters like cutout, dry brush, darken outlines, watercolor, all at very light applications. Just trying to kill the jaggies creatively here. Or go with the effect, just be careful of cheeseball over filtering!
Print a sample on your inkjet wth Epson Heavy matt (if you have an Epson)
or the equivalent for other makers. Basically a thicker bright white coated photo quality matte paper. Sometimes boosting CMY not K is good (SATURATION). Oh and color management can help too. Basically use a profile in Photoshop that your printer can print, safest is sRGB-1243295 (whatever that number is). Use the profile in Photoshop and PROOF setup in Photoshop, insure in mode that profile is applied. Set gamma for conversions at 1.0 (color management) and "perceptuel" seems to work, black point comp usually stays checked, and use dither 8bit is checked.

I'm gonna' stop there. I put the painful stuff at the end so you wouldn't get tired of reading early. I know it's long, but hey, you asked! I have developed this process in playing with my large format printer and seeing what works and what looks like shit. COLOR is most important! Detail is great but you need to be inside the print to see it. You just have to kill the jaggies because they always look like crap. That's why cutout filter is cool sometimes. Can make a straight line out of a staircase especially when applied at high-res.

With all that said, I would be happy to print an image out for you on my machine. It's not free but WAY cheaper tham Kinkos and it's done by me, on some seriously high quality paper if you can spring for it. Hahnemuhle photo rag, German etching, and watercolor paper are all in house at the moment.

Anyway, hope it helps, and if you want a print or 10 I'd help you out at lower than anywhere ever kind of prices. Just have to pay for ink and paper and my time to set up and package + shipping in a tube.
Typical 24"x36" on art rag is like $50
Glossy and other cheap papers approx $30
+SHIPPING

Justin
thisjustin@sbcglobal.net

[Beequick]

Sorry but I was gone for awhile. Thanks for the advise guys. I will think about it and tinker and see what I can come up with....... :o