How to print large posters on a regular printer

We had a school project which required a large size print. After looking online for a solution I run across http://www.blockposters.com/. While convenient, it adds logo to the free posters or you have to pay for the one without the logo. Another problem with the site is that you can not control final output size with any accuracy. We ended up using the free site and pasting some notes over the logo but I wanted to find a free and accurate method of doing this.

After some experiments and reading various online posts I found a method that uses only free tools and works very well.

Tools you need

You will need following tools:

Paint.net - http://www.getpaint.net/index.html

You can also use any other image editing software such as Gimp or Paint Shop Pro or even Photoshop. As long as you can specify canvas size and produce image of desired size any software will work.

You will also need PDF printer and PDF reader. My personal favorite is Foxit Reader - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/PDF-create.php

It comes with free PDF printing driver which works reasonably well. You can use any other PDF creation software that has printer driver and allows to create custom paper sizes.

How to do it

Open your image in Paint.net and resize canvas to desired size. For example if you want to print 11x14 poster board you would have to re-size your canvas  to be 11x14. Don't forget to account for resolution at which you want to print. Resize your image to match your canvas and get ready to print.

Next you will need to create custom page size that matches your desired output. Open Devices and Printers applet, right click on Foxit Reader PDF Printer and select Printing Preferences. In the dialog that will appear select Layout tab and click on Custom Page Size button. Add your desired page size using the dialog.

Next step is to print your image using Foxit Reader PDF Printer and just created custom page size. As a result you will obtain a PDF file that contains your image in the large format.

Open this PDF file in the Foxit Reader and select File/Print menu. This will open Print dialog. Select Tile Large Pages button and chose page overlap and cut marks if desired. You will need to experiment with black ink and plain paper to get the result you want.

After all configuration is finished you can print your poster.