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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 PostScript, 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.

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9 Answers 9

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

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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.

alt text

(open source, Windows)

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  • This seems like a really good solution, but unfortunately I couldn't get it to work on Windows Vista. (I did file a bug report about that to their system.)
    – Ilari Kajaste
    Sep 2, 2009 at 8:05
  • Not usable on Windows 7
    – Myer
    Jul 2, 2011 at 21:25
  • Yes, too bad it does not work on Windows 7. I won't downvote this, but I upvoted the posterazor tip since it worked OK for me
    – Palmin
    Feb 9, 2012 at 16:03
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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.

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    It's worth noting that PosteRazor can be installed in Ubuntu via Software Center so it should be the easiest way for casual users. Note that this only supports raster images. Ubuntu users may use command line commands "pdfposter" or "poster" for more generic needs but I'm not aware of GUI for those.
    – Mikko Rantalainen
    Dec 5, 2011 at 9:36
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    I could not open PDF files in posterazor. Only JPGs.
    – Alex
    Mar 3, 2012 at 16:27
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    "As input, posterazor takes a raster image" like a JPG, not a PDF. To use Posterazor ON a PDF, one would first have to export a PDF to images with a tool like Acrobat or pdftk.
    – Myer
    Mar 4, 2012 at 18:29
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It is paid software, but it has a few features that might come in handy depending on what you are doing. It does have a free version that stamps "eval" all over the image. It is designed for printing things to scale for cutting out.

https://woodgears.ca/bigprint/

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plakativ package in Ubuntu

Source: https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/plakativ

It also handles PDF files as input.

Just use

sudo apt install plakativ

to install.

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    – Community Bot
    Mar 22 at 10:45
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If you have a PDF file you can take a look at this Acrobat Reader's feature --> Print posters and banners using Acrobat

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The OP Question is biased towards a command line solution such as provided by GhostScript Printing. I will provide an answer below but first using other suggestions cover related issues.

Some users have suggested PosterPrinter as a GUI interface to the task. It still works surprisingly well in Modern Windows XP, Vista 7, 8 + (here in Win10) AFTER you get over many quirky installation problems!
However it has other oddities, so will show how it works, or does not, in combination with GhostScript and other printer outputs.

Here it is used in combination with GhostScript PS printing to generate a PostScript file from a PDF. (PosterPrinter can also output PDF via Microsoft Print to PDF)

enter image description here

The major issue is the outputs are very much biased to images by using Bitmaps as inputs, and very little control over margins and overlaps. It is also limited to Windows. However for splitting image sourced inputs it is worth keeping. But there are simpler Command Line tools. enter image description here

Other GUI suggestions include Acrobat Reader for Windows, PDF into PS, virtual PDF or physical printers, but it is not a Cross Platform solution.

Answer

Artifex GhostScript is perfect across many platforms for PCL, PDF or PS print to Physical or virtual printers. Maintaining source quality, that is its speciality. So I will simply say that GS usage for convert to PDF is second to none, bar Acrobat. Thus the remaining part of the task is how to split pages.

My suggestion is to use its sister rendering biased companion, Artifex MuPDF MuTool. which has a Poster decimation command so simply chain the output from GS into MuTool Poster. The main advantage is PDF text will still be text.

So splitting A3 PDF into 2 A4 PDF across all platforms is as simple as

Mutool poster -x 0 -y 2 SplitPagesIn2.pdf splitme.pdf

Then if needs be use GhostScript again to print the SplitPagesIn2.pdf

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-1

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. :-)

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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

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  • I could not access the website... has this program disappeared?
    – Palmin
    Feb 9, 2012 at 16:02

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