Tiled printing

Last updated
A tiled printing of a subway station hung in a hallway (source photo) Tiled printing example - MARTA.jpg
A tiled printing of a subway station hung in a hallway (source photo)

Tiled printing is a method that computer programs use to enable users to print images larger than a standard page. This method was popularized by a program called The Rasterbator. A tiled printing program overlays a grid on the printed image in which each cell (or tile) is the size of a printed page and then prints each tile. A person can then arrange the tiles to reconstruct the full image.

Contents

Tiled printing has been widespread since the days of mainframe computers. An early example is the Unix banner program, which in some Unix variants created very large printable text banners out of ASCII characters. Programs were available to convert images to ASCII art that, when printed large enough and viewed sufficiently far away, appeared to be smoothly shaded. Modern software may use halftoning to achieve a similar effect.

Another form of tiled printing, inspired by continuous feed printers, involves making a long message of letters, possibly with inline graphics of the same height, and printing it sideways over several pages to make a banner. This type of printing is usually associated with The Print Shop, a 1980s software package.

Since high-resolution images are used to create the prints, a large amount of ink is used in the process of making tiled prints. Ink jet printers are used to make tiled printouts without sacrificing the resolution of the original image at reasonable cost. These decorations are sometimes called rasterbations, after a popular tiled printing program, "The Rasterbator." The Rasterbator program accepts users images and divides them into a grid format. Users can specify how big the final product should be, in terms of pages. The application then produces PDF images that when printed out, form the entire picture.

World records

The 2012 University of Toronto Schools rasterbation UTS2012rasterbation.jpg
The 2012 University of Toronto Schools rasterbation
Picture of the world record rasterbation at The Gathering 2013 The Gathering 2013 Scream rasterbation.jpg
Picture of the world record rasterbation at The Gathering 2013

Rasterbation is often the subject of record-breaking attempts to create the largest and most impressive tiled prints. The title of the world's largest rasterbation was previously held by "the Doomtech crew". [1] However, in June 2007 the graduating class of the University of Toronto Schools, a Toronto high school, produced a rasterbation incorporating 1462 sheets of 8+1⁄2"×14" legal-sized paper. [2] This achievement surpassed the previous record by over two hundred sheets, but then was overtaken by a group from Groton School in May 2008. The Groton School Rasterbation [3] used more than 1500 sheets of 11x14" paper and was 100' tall, making it the largest ever.

In June 2012, another graduating class from the University of Toronto Schools produced 74 9-by-9-foot (2.7 m × 2.7 m) rasterbations in one night, each incorporating 143 sheets of 8+1⁄2×11" letter-sized paper, for a record-shattering total of 10,582 sheets. Each rasterbation included the face of one of the graduating students with a doorway cut out of his or her gaping mouth - altogether, they created a corridor of mouths throughout the school's hallways.

In March 2013, a 1,017 square feet (94.5 m2) rasterbation of Edvard Munchs iconic painting The Scream was created at Norway's largest computer party The Gathering (TG), as part of the art project "Scream from nature". [4] It is the largest known reprint of any Munch painting. The rasterbation, made by the crew at Sørlanet, consisted of 1,517 (37 × 41) sheets of A4 paper, and measured 28.25 by 36.05 feet (8.61 m × 10.99 m). [5] [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Text editor</span> Computer software used to edit plain text documents

A text editor is a type of computer program that edits plain text. Such programs are sometimes known as "notepad" software. Text editors are provided with operating systems and software development packages, and can be used to change files such as configuration files, documentation files and programming language source code.

Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online content. Desktop publishing software can generate page layouts and produce text and image content comparable to the simpler forms of traditional typography and printing. This technology allows individuals, businesses, and other organizations to self-publish a wide variety of content, from menus to magazines to books, without the expense of commercial printing.

In computing, tar is a computer software utility for collecting many files into one archive file, often referred to as a tarball, for distribution or backup purposes. The name is derived from "tape archive", as it was originally developed to write data to sequential I/O devices with no file system of their own, such as devices that use magnetic tape. The archive data sets created by tar contain various file system parameters, such as name, timestamps, ownership, file-access permissions, and directory organization. POSIX abandoned tar in favor of pax, yet tar sees continued widespread use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newline</span> Special characters in computing signifying the end of a line of text

A newline is a control character or sequence of control characters in character encoding specifications such as ASCII, EBCDIC, Unicode, etc. This character, or a sequence of characters, is used to signify the end of a line of text and the start of a new one.

OS/8 is the primary operating system used on the Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP-8 minicomputer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dots per inch</span> Measure of dot density

Dots per inch is a measure of spatial printing, video or image scanner dot density, in particular the number of individual dots that can be placed in a line within the span of 1 inch (2.54 cm). Similarly, dots per centimetre refers to the number of individual dots that can be placed within a line of 1 centimetre (0.394 in).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CUPS</span> Computer printing system

CUPS is a modular printing system for Unix-like computer operating systems which allows a computer to act as a print server. A computer running CUPS is a host that can accept print jobs from client computers, process them, and send them to the appropriate printer.

Optical mark recognition (OMR) collects data from people by identifying markings on a paper. OMR enables the hourly processing of hundreds or even thousands of documents. For instance, students may remember completing quizzes or surveys that required them to use a pencil to fill in bubbles on paper. A teacher or teacher's aide would fill out the form, then feed the cards into a system that grades or collects data from them.

In computers, a printer driver or a print processor is a piece of software on a computer that converts the data to be printed to a format that a printer can understand. The purpose of printer drivers is to allow applications to do printing without being aware of the technical details of each printer model.

Pixels per inch (ppi) and pixels per centimetre are measurements of the pixel density of an electronic image device, such as a computer monitor or television display, or image digitizing device such as a camera or image scanner. Horizontal and vertical density are usually the same, as most devices have square pixels, but differ on devices that have non-square pixels. Pixel density is not the same as resolution — where the former describes the amount of detail on a physical surface or device, the latter describes the amount of pixel information regardless of its scale. Considered in another way, a pixel has no inherent size or unit, but when it is printed, displayed, or scanned, then the pixel has both a physical size (dimension) and a pixel density (ppi).

Imposition is one of the fundamental steps in the prepress printing process. It consists of the arrangement of the printed product's pages on the printer's sheet, in order to obtain faster printing, simplify binding and reduce paper waste.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Binary file</span> Non-human-readable computer file encoded in binary form

A binary file is a computer file that is not a text file. The term "binary file" is often used as a term meaning "non-text file". Many binary file formats contain parts that can be interpreted as text; for example, some computer document files containing formatted text, such as older Microsoft Word document files, contain the text of the document but also contain formatting information in binary form.

A photographic album or photo album, is a series of photographic prints collected by an individual person or family in the form of a book. Some book-form photo albums have compartments which the photos may be slipped into; other albums have heavy paper with an abrasive surface covered with clear plastic sheets, on which surface photos can be put. Older style albums often were simply books of heavy paper on which photos could be glued to or attached to with adhesive corners or pages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Page layout</span> Part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement of visual elements on a page

In graphic design, page layout is the arrangement of visual elements on a page. It generally involves organizational principles of composition to achieve specific communication objectives.

The banner program on Unix and Unix-like operating systems outputs a large ASCII art version of the text that is supplied to it as its program arguments. One use of the command is to create highly visible separator pages for print jobs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual printer</span> Simulated device resembling a printer driver

In computing a virtual printer is a simulated device whose user interface and API resemble that of a printer driver, but which is not connected to a physical computer printer.

Canon Production Printing, known as Océ until the end of 2019, is a Netherlands-based subset of Canon that develops, manufactures and sells printing and copying hardware and related software. The product line includes office printing and copying machinery, production printers, and wide-format printers for both technical documentation and color display graphics.

SOCET SET is a software application that performs functions related to photogrammetry. It is developed and published by BAE Systems. SOCET SET was among the first commercial digital photogrammetry software programs. Prior to the development of digital solutions, photogrammetry programs were primarily analog or custom systems built for government agencies.

The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.

References

  1. ↑ "Rasterbation TG06 - Doomtech". rasterbation.doomtech.net. Retrieved 2023-04-24.
  2. ↑ "Google Sites".
  3. ↑ "Ian MacLellan - Boston portrait, travel, and adventure photographer and filmmaker".
  4. ↑ ""Skrik" blir kunstprosjekt på The Gathering - Aftenposten". www.aftenposten.no. Archived from the original on 2013-10-17.
  5. ↑ "Hamar Arbeiderblad > Nyheter". h-a.no. Archived from the original on 2013-03-29.
  6. ↑ "- Vi har printet ut verdens største "Skrik" - fvn.no". www.fvn.no. Archived from the original on 2013-03-31.

Applications

Articles

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.