Software Review Posterazor For Printing Posters

Here's a quick, easy way to print out posters from your computer. Posterazor is the perfect software solution for poster printing. If you've used The Rasterbator online, this is pretty similar but you don't have to be online to use it. Now you can print out great looking posters from home, the office or anywhere you don't have an internet connection.

So I use this personally for promo posters for my business. I have printed out a couple decorative poster art type projects, but my main use is for window posters to promote sale items. This program lets you print out an image over multiple pages of paper so you can tape or collage them together to make one large poster. Here's an example of a Valentine's Day poster I made for a friend.

Valentine's Day sale poster made with some clipart, and 4 pages of paper.

I use Fedora so I did  a yum search and I found it available in the repositories. yum install posterazor and yum did the rest. Using the program is pretty simple as well. Basically for my project I created a 6900 x 3600 pixel file in Gimp 2.8. Chose my font, added some clipart and exported the file as a jpg image.

Designed in Gimp 2.8 at 6900 x 3600 pixels and exported as jpg.

 Next you open Posterazor.Click on the folder icon over on the right hand side where it says input image. Find the directory where you saved the file you created and open it in The Posterazor, when the file opens click the next button over on the bottom right hand corner. You can click the images in this blog post to enlarge them for a better view.

Step 1 of The Posterazor. Select the image you want to turn into a poster.

 During step 2 I kept everything on the default settings. This more or less controls your borders. You can play around with this a bit on your own. I just left it at default and cut the borders on one page so they overlapped a bit and had some room to tape. I found this easier for me. Again click next.

In step 2 I left everything set at the defaults.

Step 3 lets you adjust the overlapping of the pages. Again I left this on the default setting and clicked next.

Step 3 controls the overlapping, again I left this set at the defaults.

Step 4 shows you how the pages will print, and how many pages you will be using. You can adjust this to make your poster larger or smaller. I wanted mine to be about 4 pages, landscaped, to place in the storefront windor. So I created it at 2 pages width, and 1.5 page height. Click next.

Step 4 shows you how many pages you'll be printing. This can be adjusted to add more or less pages depending on the size of the poster desired.

 Step 5 click on the floppy disk icon under where it says save the poster. Choose the directory you want to save it in, name the file and give it a pdf extension. Press the OK button and your pretty much done.

Click on the floppy disk icon, name the file and give it a pdf extension.

All you have to do now is open up the pdf file, click print, and your printer will do the rest. Trim the edges, I trim the edges on one side and tape it on the back. I think it looks neater and hides the tape for the most part.

Open the pdf file in your favorite pdf viewer. I used Okular. The image will be broken up in page sections. Click print, and tape your pages together, you have acheived poster !

Whatever you decide to use the Posterazor for, this is a great piece of software, that's fun and easy to use. Makes great posters in 6 easy steps ! This is perfect for creating promo posters for the store window at work ! If you've used this program leave a comment and tell me what you've used it for.

Software Review KColorChooser

After recovering from my first Linux disaster, I promise I'll post more on that in the next couple days. I wiped Windows from my system and did a minimal install of Fedora 18 KDE. So long Windows ! After the install, I played around a bit to see exactly what was pre-installed in my computer, removed the packages I had no use for, and found a couple interesting surprises. My favorite one is KColorChooser.

One of the things I love about Linux is all the great software available for graphic design, and web design. KColorChooser is another great example of some of the great software available for designers. This is a really simple program that allows you to select colors from either the color pallete, or anywhere on the screen. Now that I've been doing a lot of web design I've wanted to look for a program just like this. This is the perfect program to use when you're developing your color schemes on web pages, and graphics.

When you load the program a small color pallete opens and you can just mouse click on the color selection. KColorChooser then shows you the rgb values along with the html hex values. Now, one of the really cool features of this program is you're not limited to the color pallete. Let's say you download a really cool wallpaper and love a particular shade of blue found in the image. KColorChooser will allow you to select the color from anywhere on the screen. So, just click the color dropper icon your cursor will transform into crosshairs and click on the part of screen with the color you want and KColorChooser will give you all the color values you need. The same thing if you're surfing the web and come across a cool color scheme on a website, or web graphic. Open KColorChooser , click the color dropper, click on the part of the website that has the color you want, and voila, KColorChooser gives you all the info you need to use that color in your next design project. The program loads quick, uses minimal system resources and really couldn't be any more convenient !

Finding this in the graphics section of my application launcher really was a pleasant surprise. I've wanted one of these color choosers on my computer for a while now, but just haven't gotten around to it out of sheer laziness. Thanks KDE !

One more KDE program worthy of mention, is KCharSelect. It's a simple character map that comes with most KDE installs. When you need a character map, just open your terminal, type kcharselect, and the image map will load on your screen. Very simple to use, and comes in handy when working with different fonts, dingbats, and webdings.

Even if your not using a KDE desktop, these programs are available for most Linux distros. If you don't have these programs do a quick search of your repositories and see if they're available for install. Both programs save you time, are easy to use, and use very limited system resources. I give both these programs five penguins and a thumbs up !