V’s Link & Photo Blog

After posting photos of my apartment a couple weeks ago I got tons of people asking how I made my “Life Poster” seen in this photo. Here are my instructions to create one in about 20-30 min for about $29. Good Luck!

THE INSTRUCTIONS

Step 1. Make a new iPhoto Album. Fill it with the 98 photos you want in your poster. Try to pick photos with lots of different colors. If you pick all indoor florescent light photos your poster is going to look like crap.

Step 2. Crop all the photos landscape with the crop tool constrained to “4 x 3 (DVD)”. While you are in edit mode make sure to use the new “Adjust” dashboard built into iPhoto 5 to give your photos great color and contrast.

Step 3. Go the the “File” menu and select “Page Setup…”. Click the “Settings” popup and select “Custom Paper Size”. Click the “New” button and then name this paper size “Life Poster”. Set the paper height as 30″, the width as 20″ and change the top and bottom margins to 0 leaving the left and right at 0.25 then click “OK”.

Step 4. Go to the “File” menu and select “Print..” Click the “Style” popup and select “Contact Sheet”. Set the “Across” slider at 7 and make sure to check the “Save paper” box. Now, instated of clicking print, click “Save As PDF…”. Saving will take a few minutes since it is saving out 98 full sized photos.

Step 5. Open the PDF file you just saved in Photoshop. When it is opening it will ask you what size you would like to open the PDF at. Set the DPI to 200 and then click “OK”. Go to the File menu and click “Save As…”, click on the “Format” menu and select TIFF then click “Save”.

Step 6. Find the TIFF file you just saved and import it into iPhoto by dragging it onto the window.

Step 7. Select the poster file you just imported and the click “Order Prints” from the action bar at the bottom of the window. Add one 20×30 print to you order and then click “Buy Now”.

That is it. You poster will be at your house in a few days.

BTW: These are great gifts. In addition to the one I made for my apartment I have also made one for my mom and grandma for their birthdays. So if you are short of ideas and need to get someone a cool gift I promise you this is a good bet.

UPDATE: I thought I would also share this little twist I put on the poster I made for my grandma. I took a panoramic photo of her house and filled the top row with it. It looked pretty cool.