So i was playing SSX 2012 once again and I got the insatiable urge to make myself a nice poster to fix a 5x7 ft space of empty wall, I have a family member in the art world and framing business, I got a hold of some of her contacts for printing high quality Large-Format posters in the area.After shopping around the size and desired quality of my poster, my idea from a simple $50 investment turned into a $100-$300 investment according to the printers...
So i turned to Rasterbation. I'd successfully utilized this method for poster in the past for a 4x8 poster I have currently in my room but this was going to be a much larger project it would span 9 pages horizontally by 5 pages vertically (of 8.5x11 paper), it would take me time, but it would be much more fun to do it myself instead of commisioning a pro to print it out for me at five times the cost.
And so I tested out the print of the first page to see if I liked the quality before printing all 45 pages, obviously. Even with dots at 1mm (smallest avialable through The Rasterbator), the project did not look high quality enough, so i resorted to a professional printing software called: Poster Printerby Ronyasoft. I considered the price tag of $19.95 (Home License) to be a considerably cheaper investment than the $200-$300+ price tag quoted to me by professional print stores. After a visit to Office Depot I spent $50 on a new pair of color and black ink cartiges for my Cannon Printer. I needed tape: $5 for a roll of Scotch and Double/Sided Tape, and I'm looking at a total: $75 spent with 45 sheets of paper as free (had 500 blank sheets sitting around).
*Note: if you use the Rasterbator instead of the high-quality Poster Printing Software, you'll also save on ink considering you'll be printing at anywhere from dots of 1mm to 10mm (average can depend on size of artwork and desired output of quality), instead of at 100-300dpi for a high-quality Large Format Print.
Here's the final Large Format composite image I came up with:
(this is 25% of the final resolution version)
To save space I had to crop and move some of the boarders around to get the desired backgrounds of the images to be displayed. (moved Moby twice)
Link to Rasterbator Standalone & demo of Poster Printer: https://mega.co.nz/#F!ttN1HRbY!NE7VyxO62vALonLESqg7GQ
Original pictures used to make it: https://mega.co.nz/#F!clE13ZTJ!9jjSfKhxNg_80NXIGLhNLw
Other pics I considered using but left out: https://mega.co.nz/#F!t5kSTbzZ!ZD0xmx89ALdlnlKRkoRz-Q
4 versions of the final composite (100%,75%,50% and 25% resolution available) Including the original 600+mb Photoshop .psd file: https://mega.co.nz/#F!NxNmBRZD!svvMUsW6ZmHjT_RtaHYK1g (psd is still uploading, please be patient)
Here's the progress so far:
Did the top row on the floor first, then put it up all in one go (to make sure the poster was aligned correctly)
For scale:
My tools and a preview of what's next:
I'll edit this post with more progress shots and the final result once I get it all up!
Any feedback or any SSX-ralated Rasterbations or posters YOU have? Post pics, I'd love to see them!
That's gonna be massive! Looking great so far, and props for coming up with a creative solution! I'll have to remember tiled printing for my own stuff.
