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by Wolf Paulus.
Original Post: Create an iPoster with 98 of your best photos
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A few weeks ago Mike explained on his blog how to use iPhoto5 and PhotoShop to create a cool 20x30 inch poster built out of 98 of his photos. I read it but since I neither have PhotoShop nor iPhoto 5 yet, I forgot about it until last weekend, when I tried to get something like this done with just OSX 10.x and iPhoto 4.
The result is amazing, using Ofoto or iPhoto's built-in "Order Prints" function, you end up with a 20x30 inch poster consisting of 98 of your photos for just $22.99.
Step 1. Select 98 Photos
Make a new iPhoto Album. Fill it with the 98 photos you want in your poster. It's a good idea to pick photos with lots of different colors. Don't put photos that show the same object or (from a distance) would look almost the same right next to each other - move them around a bit instead.
Step 2. Crop to 4x3
Switch from Organize into Edit mode and crop all the photos landscape, constrained to "4 x 3 (DVD)".
Step 3. Define the Page
Open the "File" menu and select "Page Setup...". Click the "Settings" popup and select "Custom Paper Size". Click the "New" button and then name this paper size "Life Poster". Set the paper height as 30", the width as 20" and change the top and bottom margins to 0 leaving the left and right at 0.25 then click "OK".
Here I followed Mike's instruction and the result was that the printed poster really didn't have any margin at the top. You may want to experiment here a little - next time I'd probably try a 0.25 margin for the top as well.
Before leaving the Page-Setup dialog make sure the Paper - Size is set to "Life Poster".
Step 4. Print to PDF
Make sure your Poster album is selected but neither photo is (Open the "Edit" menu and select "Deselect All"). Now open the "File" menu and select "Print.." Click the "Style" popup and select "Contact Sheet" and set the "Across" slider at 7 and make sure to check the "Save paper" box. Now, instated of clicking print, click "Save As PDF...". Saving will take a few minutes - even on a G5 - since it is saving out 98 full sized photos. The poster.pdf file I saved had a size of 339MB.
Step 5. Convert into a 200dpi TIFF
Right-Click (or option click) the PDF file you just saved, put the focus on "Open With" and select "GraphicConverter".
In GraphicConverter open "Picture", put the focus on the "Size" submenu and select "Resolution". Set the values for horizontal and vertical to 200.0 ppi, keep the "Convert picture" check box checked and click OK.
Go to the File menu and click "Save as...", click on the "Format" menu and select TIFF then click "Save".
Open the "Picture" menu open "Show Information" window. If you select "Inch" in the drop down, you should see a final size of 20x30 and a resolution of 200dpi. The final file the size by the way is 68.7 MB
Step 6. Order Print
If you want to order your print through iPhoto simply drag the TIFF file onto the window. If you want to use any other online service like Ofoto just go to their site and upload the file. However, remember you are uploading 68.7 MB so it may be a while ...
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