Mindful Musings

Since the original site is gone and I would like to save the instructions for the future, here they are from the Wayback Machine.

The very cool Mike Matas posted instructions on how to make a ‘Life Poster’ but sadly some of us are still using PCs and can’t use his iPhoto wizardry. Well for those like me here are the instructions for creating a life poster using Photoshop…

Step one
Create a new folder on your drive and copy 98 images that you want to include in your life poster to that folder. Make sure that you are copying the images and not moving the images.

Step two
You are going to want all your photos in a 4:3 ratio so cropping will be necessary for any landscape photos before you put your poster together. This is simple to do in photoshop, simple open the file, select the cropping tool icon, enter the ration in the boxes provided under the tool bar then simple select the area of the photo that you want – the election box with hold the correct ratio for you.

Step three
Use the “Contact Sheet II” tool (File> Automation> Contact Sheet II) to apply the following properties:
Use: Folder
Browse: The folder you’ve created
Units: inches
Width: 19.5
Height: 30
Resolution: 200 pixels/inch
Mode: RGB
Flatten All Layers: Check
Place: eitherway, whatever feels lucky to you
Columns: 7
Rows: 14
Use Auto-Spacing: Check
Click OK.

Step four
Sit back and watch photoshop do it’s magic. This is an automated process so the action is going to be taking place on the screen and not in the background – each image will open, resize, copy into the poster document and be places. No doubt this will take up a lot of your computer’s mojo so best to just let it sit.

Step five
Now it is time to add the side margins… Image> Canvass Size
Change Width from 19.5 to 20 and hit ok – this will add a quarter of an inch margin to each side of the image.

Step six
All set to save (TIFF is always good) and either upload to the photo processing site or take it into Kinkos or such to be printed.