Once your printer is in proper working order (see the article prior to this one), now you can do some cool stuff with it. Instead of the plain old boring documents you normally print, you can take any image and “rasterbate” it.

What does “rasterbate” mean? Tiled printing. It’s the process where you take one photo and print it across several pages, i.e. the “tiles”. Ordinarily this is very difficult to do, but with certain software it’s stupidly easy.

Rasterbator 1.21, made a really long time ago in 2005, still does the tiled printing thing very well. It works in any Windows from XP 32-bit all the way to Win7 64-bit and will also work with any printer using almost any paper size.

Step 1. Launch Rasterbator, pick your language, click Continue

Step 2. Click Browse to select an image

…then click Continue.

Step 3. Select a paper size and orientation

…then click Continue.

Step 4. Define the output size

Notes on this:

The grid shows exactly what each page will be printing. Also be sure to see “Paper consumption” as it will tell you exactly how many pages will be needed to print the entire job. In the example above, it would take 15 pages.

The more sheets you choose, the larger the job will obviously be.

If you’re looking specifically to tile a wall with a rasterbated image, the “Output image size” will be of use to you. In the above example, the total area size of all the pages put together physically would be 1.08 x 0.81 meters.

If you need a meter-to-inch or meter-to-feet converter, use this.

Step 5. Specify cutout, dot size and color more

Cutout line: If you plan on cutting the paper physically after the job is printed, you’ll need a guide and that’s what the lines are for. If you don’t intend to cut the paper afterward, uncheck the box.

Dot size: The printed image will be composed of dots. The default dot size is 10mm. If you want a sharper image, choose a lower dot size. If the job you plan to print is going to be physically huge (like a 50-sheet job), use a larger dot size. I recommend leaving it at 10mm so you can see what it looks like as its does work for most images.

Color mode: Black is obviously black. Custom color will print just like black does, except using the color you choose – but will still be monochrome. Multi-color means to print a color image.

Step 6. Choose a location to save the PDF, and save

The finalized file will be a PDF. This is good because the file is compeltely ready-print once completed.

You can then print your PDF via Adobe Reader, SumatraPDF (free) or whatever PDF reader software you use.

What do rasterbated-printed images look like?

There’s a whole bunch of examples right here.

Where do you get Rasterbator?

http://arje.net/rasterbator_1.21

Yes, it’s free.

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