Creating a 'life poster'

This tutorial will show you how to create a 'life poster'. A life poster is a collection of dozens of images of your life onto one single poster. What you need: some dozen photos, Posterino and 10 minutes time.

Overview

Here's the quick version of the tutorial, for the experienced user this may be all he needs. More detailed instructions see below.

  1. Create a new document and choose a 'life poster' template.
  2. Select an iPhoto album from the image picker at the sidebar. See Importing Images if you want to use other image sources than iPhoto.
  3. Use Fill at Random from the Images menu to fill the poster with random images from the selected iPhoto album.
  4. Remove the images you don't want on the poster and use the random selection again. Repeat this process until you are pleased with the result.
  5. Click the Shuffle toolbar button (and use drag & drop) to position your images.
  6. Double click the images to change the visible portion.
  7. Click the Export toolbar button to render your poster.

Next we will shed more light on each individual step.

To create a 'life poster':

  1. Choose a template

    Start Posterino or create a new document by choosing the New... command from the File menu.

    A new document will open and display a sheet of templates:

    The Template Chooser
    The template chooser.

    From the list of templates select the one named "Classic (Portrait)". Depending on your locale the poster size will be 20 by 30 inches or DIN A2.

    You should choose a paper size and resolution approbriate for the output target you plan for your poster. If you need a different size, use the Size popup menu or define your own paper size.

    Press the Choose button.

    A new "Classic Life Poster" document will open. You see a poster with many empty image frames to fill:

    An new poster document.
    An new poster document.
  2. Select an iPhoto album

    On the sidebar of the document window you see the image picker:

    If the image picker is not visible, press the Show Image Picker button. button at the bottom of the sidebar or choose Image Picker from the View menu (or press Command-1).

    At the top of the image picker is a popup menu. From this popup menu choose the iPhoto album holding the photos you would like to use for your poster. For example, use the album holding your photos from your last vacation. In our example we choose the "China '04" album holding pictures from our last trip to China. See Importing Images if you want to use other image sources than iPhoto.

    Choosing an iPhoto album.
    Choosing an iPhoto album.
  3. Choose the images

    Next we will use a very fast way to fill the poster with images:

    • Choose Select random Images from the Images menu (or press Command-R). This command will fill the poster with random images from the selected iPhoto album.

    • Select the photos you don't like and choose Delete from the Edit menu (or press Command-Del). This will remove the image from the frame.

      To select the photos click them with the mouse. You may extend the selection by holding down the Shift or Command key while you click an image.

    Repeat the last two steps until you are satisfied with the chosen images.

    You may as well use drag and drop to move photos from the image picker into the poster.

    Now our poster looks something like this:

    A poster filled with images.
    A poster filled with images.
  4. Alter the image placement

    Now that we populated our poster with photos, we need to arrange them. There are two possible ways:

    You could order all picture by a criteria or place the image at random.

    To place your pictures at random, click the Shuffle Shuffle toolbar button toolbar button (or press Command-Shift-R). Click it again until you are satisfied with the placement.

    Fine-tune the random placement using drag and drop to move the images from one place to an other.

    If you like to order your picture go to the Poster menu and choose one of the menu items below Arrange Images. For example, you could arrange your images ...by Date, ...by Name or ...by Rating.

  5. Crop the images

    Next we will inspect our poster to check that no important parts of the images are clipped off by the frame.

    Use Zoom In (or press Command-'+') and Zoom Out (or press Command-'-') from the View menu to zoom in and out of the poster to see more or less details.

    For example, the image below has a bad clipping because the person's head is clipped off. Look for a similar problem on your poster and double click the image.

    Bad clipping.
    Bad clipping.

    The image bounds are displayed and you can grab the orange knobs to change the size of the image, the green knob to rotate the image and the white knob or any other visible part of the image to move it.

    In our example we grab the white knob and move the image down a bit.

    Good clipping.
    Good clipping.

    Now it looks much better :-)

  6. Export your poster

    If you are satisfied with your poster, choose the Export Export button toolbar button (or press Command-K) to show the export options:

    Export options.
    Export options.

    You have several ways to process your poster:

    • Send to iPhoto. From within iPhoto you can order poster prints via the built-in Kodak print service. The Kodak print service has different maximal paper sizes in different countries. Make sure to check this first to get the paper size right.
    • Save to Disk. You can put the poster image file onto a memory-stick or burn it to a CD and give it to your local print shop. Alternatively you can transmit it to one of the various internet printing services.
    • Upload to Flickr. Upload your poster to your Flickr account. If you choose this option, a dialog will appear asking for some details, like a title, a description or the tags to use. See Uploading an image to Flickr for details.

    The rendering may take some time...

Design Tip

The whole poster will look better if you don't place images with similar colors next to each other. And try to pick photos with lots of different colors.

The same is true for the overall nature and contents of the image. For example, don't place aunt Martha next to aunt Martha, put some images of dog Scuby in-between.

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