how to print big panorama?

[NeedhamDave]

I have created a large photoshop picture from 6-7 pictures, comprising a 180-degree view of the Charles River and Boston at sunset. How can I print this thing now? It's going to be something like 4" high and 30" long.

I have an HP photosmart 7550. Theoretically, there is some kind of poster paper you can buy, I think, but I would be OK with taping together 3 landscape 8.5 x 11 pages if I could get the printer to do that.

I have not found a way to do this with the software I have...which consists of:
-the HP Photo and Imaging Director
-Photoshop 6.0
-random other windows or shareware things like Irfanview

Any suggestions?

[another view]

I use a local lab that has an Epson 9600 which uses roll paper that is 44" wide. Anyone with one of these can do it for you - they should be easy to find, they're pretty standard in digital printing.

[drg]

I don't know Needham very well, but minutes NorthWest is of course Wellesley, where I know there are places that cater to students that would have any variety of large printers that should be cost effective.

Also look for Kinko's (some outlets let you email or ftp the files directly) and Office Max is now offering at some location a large format printer by Canon.

Make sure that you have a file that is at least 250dpi in both directions. I've had some experience with Hybrid/Merged/PS'd or Panorama Photos and until you print a few they are sometimes foolers. If you have seams, print sections of them with the seam in the middle on conventional paper or at your favorite photo place to make sure they're aligned well.

The Variety of papers is astounding and really changes the images. Most Landscape/Scenic that I've experienced if the contrast and resolution are good look better on a Luster type than Fine Art or a standard Matte.

I've been paying about $9 sq/ft for the past year or so to get some commercial work done and once I worked out how I wanted it to look it's been great! Two years ago the big drum printer at $6-7 a sq/ft was more finicky than some of the newer large Epson, etc. i-jets but the "chromic" inks are worth the price bump. Good luck!

C

[NeedhamDave]

I figured out how to do this. The printer has an option to poster-print 4x4 8.5x11 pages. This is so you can make a gigantic blow up of a photo for decorating your walls, etc. With this option selected, it is possible to tweak the offsets and % photo size and print out an odd-sized image spread out over 16 pieces of paper. Use the page preview to get it to fit on the pages. Then print on plain paper in draft mode to identify which pieces of paper are going to contain your image. Then, substitute those pages with photo paper, reload, and print best quality for real.

All in all, kind of a pain, but it gave me what I wanted-- 4 photo quality, landscape-oriented 8.5x11 prints that I can now cut and paste together manually. Maybe, now that I can see what the prints look like, I'll take the file to a photo shop and have it printed for real. But that was not worth the trouble before I could see what it was going to look like.

[bflo2000]

The Rasterbator is a web service which creates huge, rasterized images from any picture. The rasterized images can be printed and assembled into extremely cool looking posters up to 20 meters in size.

http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/