How to print a large page on multiple smaller pages?

Question

How can I print a larger page (A3) on multiple (two) smaller pages (A4)? This is sometimes called "poster printing", since the objective is to join the smaller printed pages together to form a larger page.

Some printer drivers do have a native option for this, but this question naturally concerns a situation where that doesn't exist.

Another assumption is that the program creating the larger page to be printed does not know how to split it into multiple parts for printing. If needed, the data format can be assumed to be PDF or PS, since you could easily create those from any print output by virtual "PDF printers" like PDFCreator.

I know ghostscript can be used to manipulate PS and PDF data - would it be able to do do this too?

Solutions for linux or windows are what I'm looking for, but I'm interested in hearing about other platforms too.

Answer 1

There is a Linux utility called, surprisingly enough, poster, which does this for PostScript files.

Answer 2

Poster Printer works with your existing printer to allow you to print documents at a much larger size than would fit on a single printed page.

(open source, Windows)

Answer 3

http://posterazor.sourceforge.net/

As input, the PosteRazor takes a raster image. The resulting poster is saved as a multipage PDF document. An easy to use, wizard like user interface guides through 5 steps. PosteRazor is available as a Windows, an OSX and a Linux version. It is an open source, GNU licensed project which is hosted on SourceForge.net.

Answer 4

Never mind the name, have a look at The Rasterbator. I've used this to create a half-wall-sized b/w blow-up of the family cat, to great effect.

You can use it online or download it. I know it's not quite what you initially asked for, but depending on what you're trying to do it might be worth a look. :-)

Answer 5

The Rasterbator is an application which creates rasterized versions of images. The rasterized images can be printed and assembled into enormous (or smaller, if you prefer) posters.

No installation is needed. Just select the source image in your hard drive and the program will automatically split it onto several pages. You select the size of the paper you wish to use and also choose either portait or landscape printing.

The Rasterbator will then save the image as PDF. After that, click the Rasterbate! button and the program will produce the output image. You can check how it looks like in your favorite PDF reader, right before printing it and hanging it on the wall.

This is an awesome program and I highly recommend it. The Rasterbator