posterazor

NAME

posterazor - splits an image across multiple pages for assembly into a poster

SYNOPSIS

posterazor [ inputfile ]

DESCRIPTION

The PosteRazor splits an image to form a multi-page PDF document. When printed, the sheets can be arranged to form a large poster of the original image.

If no inputfile is specified as a command line argument, the user will be prompted for one.

Current Features:

Input image formats

All image formats that FreeImage can read should be usable as input for the PosteRazor: BMP, DDS, Dr. Halo, GIF, ICO, IFF, JBIG, JPEG/JIF, KOALA, LBM, Kodak PhotoCD, PCX, PBM, PGM, PNG, PPM, PhotoShop PSD, Sun RAS, TARGA, TIFF, WBMP, XBM, XPM.

Color types

PosteRazor can handle the following image color types: Monochrome, Grayscale, 4 Bit palette, 8 Bit palette, 24 Bit RGB, 48 Bit RGB (only via TIFF and PNG), 32 Bit CMYK (only via TIFF) 32 Bit RGBA images can be loaded, but are transformed to 24 Bit RGB by "merging" them with a white background.

Dimension units

Because people around the world invented so many different dimension units, PosteRazor supports quite a few: m, mm, cm, inch, ft, pt(72th inch).

Printer page layout

The page size and orientation of the printer where the poster will be printed can be set manually or selected one from the following list of predefined formats: DIN A4, DIN A3, Legal, Letter or Tabloid. The size limit for one page is 5 meters (16.4 feet), which is the maximum that PDF allows.

Poster size

The size of the final poster can be set through one of these three ways:
- Absolute image size

You want to have a specific size of your poster.

- Size in Pages

You want to use whole paper sheets and specify how many of them of them you want to use.

- Image Size in percent

Your input image has a certain size which is defined by the number of pixels and dpi (dots per inch) and your want to scale the image by a certain factor.

The final size of the poster is theoretically unlimited. Let’s say it this way: it is less limited that the ink of your printer. It is possible to select the alignment of the image on the total paper. This is useful if you want to keep the unused paper.

Image tile overlapping

For a bigger tolerance when cutting spare paper borders and for easier pasting, an overlapping width and height of an image tile over the next can be set.

PDF output

The PDF output is implemented with the maximum image quality and a good compression in mind. A source image is embedded once in the PDF document and referenced from every tile page. Image color types remain unchanged. As compression method, the PDF "FlateDecode filter" (zip) is used. If a JPEG image is used as input it gets directly embedded into the document without recompression. The PDF version is 1.4, so any compatible reader should be able to read the resulting document.

Missing Support:

AUTHORS

PosteRazor was written by Alessandro Portale <alessandro AT casaportale DOT de>.

This manual page was originally written by Simrun Basuita <simrunbasuita AT gmail DOT com> for the Debian project and updated by Marcelo Soares Mota <motasmarcelo AT gmail DOT com>.