Multi-page posters

Here are some tools and methods for creating and printing multi-page posters and banners.

Free apps

PosteRazor – This is the free one to use if you need a multi-page banner/poster PDF to pass on to someone else for printing. Although PosteRazor does not have a standard Macintosh interface, it was easy enough to figure out and use.

You can choose the amount of printer margin and overlap between adjacent sheets. If you use an overlap then, after printing, you can just cut the edge of the page approximately in the right place, lay it on top of the next page and tape it together.

Other features include settings in seven different languages. You can also choose either how many sheets of paper you want to use, set the absolute size, or set a percentage enlargement. They even have a link to a short how-to video. The process is easy as they walk you through five steps. The final document is saved for printing as a PDF file because it is the most universal format. That way you can see exactly how it is going to print (pixellated or not) before actually printing the document.

It imports over 20 raster image file formats, but not PDFs.

Tiler is another free program; this can import PDFs and print them on multiple sheets. However, it does not import any other formats, and does not have an overlap option or allow you to set the margin.

iWork

If you have iWork you can do this with (surprisingly!) Numbers. Go into Print View and draw your text box across the required array of pages. If you require something more elaborate than text, you may need to produce it in another application, export (say to pdf) and then insert the exported file into your Numbers document. You can adjust the overlap by changing the margins in the Sheet tab of the Inspector.

You used to be able to do something similar with Appleworks; Numbers does it much better.

Other paid apps

Barry added: I've used Poster Print from Luxor in the past with fantastic results. It will not only create banners, but also blow up graphics or pdfs to huge poster sizes. Your base size of paper can vary, and it has some good design tools so that you can make your own banner/poster within the app. Right now it's US $23.90.

Note: as of Sept 19, 2013, this site is off-line. - Neville Reid

External links

• PosteRazor - Easily create multi-page posters, Mac OS X Hints

Credits

Contributed by several people on the Mac Ministry List, March 11, 2011