I’ve never tried this, but I remember reading some posts in the past that included suggestions. Here’s how I’d go about doing it:
Increase the size of the image on your screen to the total dimensions of your finished picture. Make sure you have the Ruler visible.
Go to Image>Duplicate and make a copy for each section you need to print. For example, if you want a three-section image:
Make three copies of the image you want to print (I’d leave the original alone!)
On the first copy, select the part of the picture you want to print and crop out the excess. Do the same on the second copy for the center section, and then crop out of the third copy just what you need for the final section of the print.
I’d probably choose the Rectangular Marquee tool and set it to Fixed Size. I think I’d add some extra width to each section to allow for overlapping, too. You’ll probably get a less noticeable seam than if you try to butt them together. You can do the same thing with the Crop tool, but just remember to have it set to the resolution you want.
Good luck! And somebody else will be along shortly with another suggestion, I’m sure.
Beth, that’s pretty cool – sorta like doing a Photomerge in reverse! Another option (not necessarily better) is to make your selections on a single copy of the photo and do a Layer>New>New Layer via Copy for each segment. Then you can print the individual layers in succession by turning off and on the visibility of the other layers. I think that’ll work, although I didn’t try it.
It might work that way, too. I like to be able to "see" what I’m doing, so I often do things the long way (which for me is sometimes faster than the shortcut!) With all segments in separate image files, you can line them up on your screen first to see how much overlap you’ve gotten. But, like I said, I’m a little weird sometimes. 🙂
If your printer has an option to do "tiling" there is no need to do anything. (most if not all HP printers have this capability).
Just go to print and then from properties and Preferences choose "tiling" and the size you want. 2×2 will print 4 sheets each with 1/4th of the photo. 3×3 will print 9 sheets each with 1/9th and so on…
Pete
Beth, re seeing the overlaps, that’s kinda why I kept them together. Can turn on and off the layer visibilities or adjust opacity to see the overlaps. But it takes a little manipulation with the print preview to print the way I described, so there are definitely tradeoffs!
Vive la difference! (or something like that…)
🙂
Pete, my HP all-in-one has a setting called Poster Printing; would that be the same thing as tiling? I’m guessing it must be…
I believe it is the same Chuck. I have used it and it works well. Takes a little while to glue stick the pages together but from 4 feet away it looks seamless.
Pete
Thanks for your responses. I’ve used Beth’s suggestion and found that on my low end Cannon S520, which does not seem to have the tile or poster function, that the trick is to photo size for the three pictures remain identical. In my first pass at this my thrid picture was slightly smaller it just about worked exactly when I increased the overlap to make that picture the same size as the rest.
Robert Daniels
Robert, glad it worked for you!
