Thursday, June 19, 2008

Multi Page Printing (Poster Printing)

A colleague of my asked me how to print an A2 PDF file into multiple A4 pages (to be exact 4 pages of A4, because A2= 4 x A4)? After some searching and finding below are the possible solutions. I divide the solutions to two part, printing Images and printing PDF documents (non Image).

A. Printing Images files as Poster

Microsoft Paint
Yes Microsoft Paint actually support Poster Printing, this features are hidden from most of the users (including me, only discover recently). Below are steps to do it in Ms Paint.

  1. Load up an Image (File –> Open)
  2. Open the Print Setup dialogs (File –> Print Setup…)
  3. Change the Scaling Fit to option

MsPaint

Freeware 
There is freeware / shareware which support this features. Below I listed two freeware, you may Google “poster printing freeware” to check out more.

Posteriza
Postaganda

 

B. Print Everything as Poster

Printer Driver
If your printer driver support this, you are lucky else you need to rely on others method / virtual printer driver as describe later. In screen below my HP 2420dn support poster printing while my HP 4200 don’t. If your printer support poster printing you should be able to find the setting under Printer Printing Preferences.
HP2420

Virtual Printer Driver
PrintGhot 1.0 from UsefulSoft allow you print any documents into multi page. Basically it is a virtual printer driver allow you output anything printable documents to multi page (poster print). http://usefulsoft.com/printghost/

Possible Solutions
This might work, but I have not try. It is just an idea only, in anyone try this out let me know.

  1. Install Microsoft Office Document Image Writer. This will allow you print anything to an Image file
  2. Use the method describe in part one and print the image files to multi page.

This might work for PostScript printer driver which can produce image files.

4 comments:

poster printing said...

It is all about how the particular software have the necessary debugging attributes for printing posters on a given size of paper.

Ota Cervenka said...

I also needed something simple for the job because I wanted to print a basic party banner ASAP.

Minutes before discovering your post (which was opened in the background ever since I Googled multiple page banner printing), I tried first two small programs out there.

The first one failed me but might not fail you (my Windows 7 maybe?), the second one worked like a dream (it even saved everything page by page as a pdf ─ give it a minute or two if you are also making a 50-page HD poster, btw).

Here are the programs I found:

http://greatis.com/utilities/posterit (Windows only, supposedly incl. Windows 7, FREEWARE for non-commercial use ─ nagging)

http://posterazor.sourceforge.net (Windows, OSX and Linux, FREEWARE ─ no major restrictions; no nagging)

IMHO, this select-and-print method is much faster than all the bloated programs I would normally use. By the time they open, the whole task is already finished and the printer is spitting out the first pages... :-)

Good luck everyone!

Ota

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A handful of near-desperate people found the above blog entry (and my comment) by searching for the following keywords or the combination of thereof: banner printing, multi-page poster printing, print multiple pages, multiple page banner print, how to print posters using normal printer, make posters and banners at home, A4 paper to print large photos, big photo printing, individual pages to make large posters and banners, overlapping printing. Please feel free to add your own keywords to help others to locate this blog.

Buy Posters Online India said...

Advertising with poster printing involves the artful use of colors, text, and images wrapped up in a simple design.

Poster Printing Prices said...

This is a useful info with useful link in there..