Printing a 100 x 80cm montage .... help!

ERU

ERU

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Hi all,

I'm a school teacher trying to finalize a school project. I have taken x12 B&W portrait photos of the children dressed up and added a grain effect to make them look old/dated. I'm very happy with the results but i'm having a right headache fitting them to the canvas/frame - which 'has' to be 100 x 80cm. No flexibility here i'm afraid.

So far I have printed them all out on A4 premium paper and blue-tacked them as four A4 across (width) and A4 three up (height). This leaves a gap at the top and bottom ... which I could frame out perhaps if I decided to go for glossy prints.

The reason i'm here is someone suggested I could try T-Shirt transfers onto a 100x80cm area and then add these over the main canvas somehow. This then got me thinking about online printers, which i've read a lot about here, and how I could just send the twelve .jpegs off and have a 100x80cm montage canvas type print delivered? Is this possible? What materials could be available? Anyone arty here whom can suggest a solution?

Cheers
 
Why not photoshop them ? if not take a picture of the final image and crop to loose unwanted may work.
 
I'm not sure I understand? How would you photoshop the twelve images into one? i.e. merge? Or do you mean take another photo of the complete montage of the original twelve?

One of the problems I seem to be facing is keep the width the same but changing the length to fit the canvas. My efforts seem to just stretch/elongate the images.
 
Open all twelve images in PS and then create a new canvas sized according to your needs.

Go to portrait one select all and copy (or marquee the entire image and then copy) go back to your new canvas and then paste. Create a new layer, go to Portrait 2, copy it and then paste it onto the new layer. Repeat until you have twelve layers and all portraits on the new canvas. You can then select each layer and move the individual portraits about until you are happy with the composition.

Save and dispatch for printing.
 
as Mark suggests, put each A4 image on its own seperate layer and then you can move them all individually on your new 100 x80 document by going to EDIT>TRANSFORM>ROTATE - you can have them straight or angled or layered one partly over the other etc

dave
 
If your image is being elongated, it would suggest you are using image size to change the sizes. Try using Canvas Size. This changes the size of the canvas, without changing the pixels in the current image. So, get your images into photoshop, change each one to the correct size that you want, start with edit, image->size A4, 300dpi.
Then create a new image, either set the size to be the 100x80, and resolution 300dpi when choosing new, or go to edit canvas size, and set it there. Then you can drag the layers from your other images into this new image. As the resolution is the same on all of the images, they will stay the say shape. You can then use the transform if necessary to change the shape/sizes of some of the layers to get them to fit.
 
Some excellent advice here folks - thanks!

So far I have all the images on a 80(w) X 100(L) canvas! I did this by 'File>New>80x100cm' as suggested. I then simply opened all .jpg twelve images (exported from Adobe Lightroom's editing) and copy and pasted them into the main canvas. Maybe I should have done this as .tiff instead?

I then used the 'Move Tool' and clicked to 'Show Transform Controls' box (i'm using Win 7 & Adobe CS5) and used the handles this enabled to make to canvas fit together with all twelve images! It now looks great! Phew!

From some previous experience i'm aware that I need all the images to be 300 DPI for the printers? I don't get any option for DPI in 'Image>Canvas Size' but I do in 'Image>Image Size'. Should I change the image size now or will this affect quality/scaling?


Printing it out
Once I have all this on my 80x100cm canvas what should I do next? Cost is obviously an issue but the school may foot the bill if asked. I have already been given the (80x100cm) canvas, in fact it's already on the wall, so it's going to be a case of sticking something onto it.

Maybe to keep the budget down I could somehow send the whole finished canvas/image to a personal home printer and get it to print on glossy paper in bits? I'd have zero experience of doing this however but wouldn't know where to start :(
 
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I know you say you have the canvas etc but if you want it done professionally check out canvas prints on this forum there is one company linked to 7dayshop.com which does some sizes for only £19.99 and has received some good reports (a few people have mentioned about some untidy corner folds) but apart from this a great price and professional finish.
Well done in getting this far
Dave
 
Well, if you can stand it being on paper, and not canvas (snapmad would have been on a canvas I think, it was £20 for an A2 one for me), then www.dscolourlabs.co.uk have been relatively cheap to me for the printing, but with a £4 delivery charge
 
Cheers, so from your experience ... would they do the whole thing onto a 100 x 80cm for less than £20? Be it paper or canvas?

Does anyone know if there is software to print something this big via a home/work A4 printer? i.e. in bits.
 
If you have photoshop, you can print it yourself.
On the print dialogue, turn off scale to paper. Untick the center image box.
Then print it with the correct offsets entered for top left (0,0), then subtract the width of the paper (less a bit) from the X, and print again. Repeat until complete.

Prices on dscolourlabs can be difficult to find.
Poster prints are here:
http://dscolourlabsupload.livelinkprint.com/about/poster.intro
 
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After plenty of research I think I quite like the idea of getting this onto the canvas somehow. So far I have found two options to do this:

1. 'The Range' sell A4 canvas that I can print onto from home and only costs £1 a sheet. I'd love to just get this done at a printers tho as my printer isn't great.

2. I get T-Shirt transfers (about £6-8?) from somewhere and use these to get the prints onto the 100x80cm canvas.

~I noticed the Oxford Image Company can do the whole thing for me but it's a massive £100 out of my price range :(
 
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