Create Beautiful Printed Fractal Posters

Time Needed : 10 minutes

Have you ever needed to print a huge fractal poster, but your printer only supports A4, Letter, or A3 paper sizes?
Did you know that you can print big images over numerous pages using a simple program like Microsoft Paint?

If you want to print a huge poster or display version of your favourite jwildfire fractal creation but don’t want to go to a specific printing shop or simply can’t afford it.

Once done, your fractal may then be printed on numerous pages using your home printer. Then all you have to do is tape the picture together, or put the paper sheets together using another means, such as glueing to a board.

This is a guide for Windows based machines, something similar is probably available on the Mac.
Here’s how it works:

  1. Find Paint on your PC

    Easy enough, click into the search area on your taskbar and type paint.

    Step 1 Find paint and load

  2. Open image

    Once Paint is loaded, you’re going to want to click File, then click Open and look for your favourite picture.

    Step 2 File then Open pic

  3. Open your picture

    Once you find your picture, click on it, then click Open

    Step 3 Browse find pic and open

  4. Then you go into the Print area to get to Page Setup

    Click File, then move down to Print, then across to Page setup

    Step 4 Go to page set up

  5. Page Setup Box Appears

    A settings box for the Page Setup will appear

    Step 5 page setup

  6. We’re interested mostly in the Scaling section of that Box

    In the scaling section this is where we’re going to have fun. We can change how many pages our picture will be printed over. Currently, it’s set to 1 page by 1 page, i.e. It will print our pic on one page only. Let’s change that!

    Step 6 Scaling options

  7. Making it bigger

    What we can do now is say we want our fractal to be printed over 4 pages, 2 across and 2 down. Of course you can change this to whatever you like if you changed it to 4 across and 4 down, then your image will be printed over 16 sheets of paper, so that’s going to be huge. Once you’ve changed the numbers, click Ok

    Step 7 setting pages

  8. Remove margins?

    Just a personal preference, if you print above without changing margins you’ll need to trim the image areas with scissors etc a lot more. You can remove the margins as seen below for a lot less snippage.

    Step 7 setting pagesv2

  9. Printing your marvel

    Then all you need to do is go to the file menu again, and click Print to print your sheets.

    Step 8 Printing your creation

  10. Sticking them all together

    Keep all your sheets together and count so you know where each is placed. So on a 2 x 2 page print, then the first two will be top left, top right and the next two will be bottom left and bottom right.

    You will get a huge smile when you see your fractals printed this big, and for a tiny fraction of the cost of what it would if you wanted a huge version from a shop. Admittedly, it’s not as professional, but done properly it looks marvellous. Have fun!

Tools
  • Printer
  • Paint Package
Materials
  • paper

You may be interested in ...

Leave a Comment