Need to Make a Photo Poster
By Robert Lachman
Posterino, from Zykloid Software, is another one of those programs that I seem to be the only one using and I love using, but no one else I know does. You see it mentioned on a few websites.
I don’t know anyone who really digs in and actually uses it. It’s a great way to make poster.The style of the posters is where you see lot and lots of photos on a page. If you were to try and do it in Photoshop, it’s no that easy. You would need to have advanced Photoshop knowledge, you would need to use the rulers and match everything up. There’s a lot of cutting and pasting. It can be done in your normal photo editing programs, but who has the time? Posterino, which can be found at http://zykloid.com/posterino makes it simple
I wanted to make a poster of my mom’s photos. She’s 90 years old and loves to take photos. I did a very nice book in iPhoto (which I will write about in the near future) but I wanted to try something different.You can check out the website I made for her at www.WheelsofLA.com I wanted to make an art style poster she could hang on the wall with a collage of her photos. It’s not that easy getting so many photos in so little real estate. So then I remembered, Posterino, which I had already downloaded but never tried. Now I’m hooked.
Besides multiple picture posters, it's pre-formatted for a nice single photo with a title or for a charge, they will make and send postcards or they will send them via email.
This program is very easy to use. Pick your landscape or portrait. I’m not sure why they don’t put vertical or horizontal, that always seemed sort of silly to me.
Next, pick the size of your poster or finished photographed. Sizes include: 8x10, 11x14, 12x18, 16x28 or 20x30.
The templates include large and small titles in a variety of locations or no titles plus black-and-white borders. Also the size and shape of the photos vary.
You can start from a blank page or you can customize the templates.
One of the templates has 365 openings for those of you who are over-the-top and shoot way too many digital photos. Just think a photo for every day of the year on one poster. I think that’s a little much.
Definitely for those shooting out there who have thousands and thousand of photos in their iPhoto library or squirreled away in folders in the outer reaches of your hard drive and can’t stop shooting pics.
The program has a nice interface, its very easy to use. You just start double-clicking and start moving photos around.
At this point it’s up to your creativity. Use one photo for each of the frames, change the size of your frames to add more visual interest. Consider running one photo across the entire poster. It’s up to you.
Always remember to SAVE as you go. Nothing worse than perfecting your project and then having a program freeze. I haven’t had any of those kinds of problems with this program which means I haven’t had to call technical support.
Once you've completed your masterpiece, it’s time to export. You have three choices: Send to iPhoto (this is a good place to save your photo and you can send the poster out with the Kodak print service; Save to Disk (this is the option I used) and Upload to Flickr (not sure why you would do this).
After saving the poster to disc I upload it to my Costco Photo Center account. The price was $9.99 for the 20x30 poster plus Shipping and Handling: $4.99 for Standard (UPS), $7.99 for 2-Day and $14.99 for Overnight. (All prices US)
I went with the 2-day shipping I was trying to be good. Yikes! The price of Overnight was twice as much as 2-day.
Costco sent the poster in a tube, which you could've run a truck over it and the tube would not have been crushed. It arrived in perfect condition. I do need to give Costco plenty of Kudos; the quality of poster was beautiful.
I dropped if off at my mom house a couple days later anwas she surprised. She took it to a framer the next morning. I hate to guess how much that frame will cost.
Remember, use can try single photo poster, which can be very nice.
As I mentioned earlier, the Posterino software also gives the option of making and sending postcards. You can send them by email or they will send them by mail for an addition charge. I will leave this for a post in the future, but this could be a very effective tool for realtors, or marketing your business.
I really could not find any problems making a poster with the program. Posterino is easy to use, fast and solves the problem of combining so many photos into one project. I would highly recommend it giving five out of five stars. The Posterino software costs: $24.95 (US) at http://zykloid.com/posterino.
______________________________________________________________________