Printing maps across multiple sheets

[pyrandon]

Here's a program recommended by our friend Butch Curry over at Zombie Nirvana Games recently posted over at his website (www.zombienirvana.com):



6 October, 2007 (13:10) | Software | By: Butch

I got an email last night from a viewer who has a large map. He wanted to print it across multiple sheets of paper rather than shrinking it down to a single sheet, and asked if there was an easy way to do this in Photoshop.

To be perfectly honest, if there is one, I don’t know what it is and my Googling couldn’t turn one up. What I DID find, though, was a rather nifty little program called PosteRazor (http://posterazor.sourceforge.net/). It takes an image and based on your choices (how many pages to split it into, how big a blank border your printer will create, how much and where to overlap the sheets, etc.) divides it up into a multi-page PDF. Just print the PDF, trim off the borders, and put it together!

It’s free, open source, and available for Windows, OSX, and Linux. It’s also a very small program (the biggest of the three versions is less than 1 MB) and very fast. I tried it out this morning and it works like a charm; it’s definitely worth a look!

[RPMiller]

Cool find. For myself though I would probably go to someone like Gamerprinter and just have them print it to a large format, but this is definitely an economical and 'at home' process. Thanks for the link!

[RobA]

If you use windows, just use the built in paint program!

By default, printing will use the image DPI and span the picture across as many pages as needed, automatically!

-Rob A>

[Naryt]

If you use windows, just use the built in paint program!

By default, printing will use the image DPI and span the picture across as many pages as needed, automatically!

-Rob A>

Didn't know that.

What I've done in the past is use Acrobat (not Acrobat Reader) to load the image. Then I just tile the image using a 1/4" overlap. Trim the interior whitespace, use the overlap to properly align the sheets, apply clear tape and presto!

Now I'll have to give both Paint and PosteRazor a try.

Update
Let me just say that PosteRazor is my new map slicer and dicer! Exceptionally easy to use, free, cross-platform and free...oh, did I say that already?

[Arcana]

I bet this program woudl be great for creating maps viewable by a tile server such as google maps api....mmmm...

[saraseo]

*Note: The following instructions were created for printing to a standard printer using 8.5 x 11 size paper. If you have access to a larger format printer, adjust the page size accordingly in the properties window. The following instructions will still apply.

To print the entire map:
Click the printer icon.
In the Print Range section choose All.
In the Page Handling section, for Page Scaling choose Fit to Printable Area or Shrink to Printable Area.
To print a portion of map:
Since many maps are large and very detailed, you may want to print only portions of the map at a smaller scale.

Zoom in to the desired printing area.
Click on the printer icon.
In the Print Range section choose Current View.
In the Page Handling section, for Page Scaling choose Fit to Printable Area.
To print the entire map at full size on multiple sheets:
The tiling feature in Adobe Reader allows users to print a full sized map on multiple sheets of paper.

Click on the printer icon.
In the Print Range section choose All.
In the Page Handling section, for Page Scaling choose Tile all pages.

sticker printing (http://www.printingblue.com)