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Making Posters

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Designing and Printing Posters

Last revision April 17, 2012

Program Settings to Print Posters

PTOLEMY printer

Ptolemy is the newer, faster, and more capable printer, with easier and more intuitive instructions. Always use it if possible. The older printer Escher is kept as a spare if Ptolemy is broken or overloaded.

ONLY THE PROGRAMS AND OPERATING SYSTEM COMBINATIONS LISTED HERE HAVE BEEN TESTED.

Many problems occur from not getting your poster orientation correct. The default orientation for the printer is this: the roll is being fed in "portrait" mode, with a width up to 42 inches along the cut edge of the paper (width of the roll), and a height up to the total length of the roll (100 feet).

If your poster has a maximum dimension greater than 42 inches, you must specify the "width" value in your page setup as the shorter dimension (less than 42") and the "height" value as the longer dimension, even though you may think of the longer dimension as the horizontal or width dimension. The printer does not agree with you! You have to rotate your poster to print correctly in this case. The detailed instructions below for supported programs tell you how to do that.

  • Adobe Illustrator CS4 on Mac OS X or Windows. Works well from either Windows or Mac OS X. Make all settings from the Illustrator Print dialog box. Set a custom page size (can specify in inches and will be converted to points) and use the print preview option to verify that your print is scaled and oriented correctly to fit the paper size you specified.
    Click here for detailed instructions for Illustrator
  • Adobe Acrobat CS4 (PDF files) on Mac OS X. Works well. First create a custom page size in File->Page Setup menu. Then open File->Print menu and check orientation and scaling in the preview window.
    Click here for detailed instructions for Acrobat on Mac OS X
  • Adobe Acrobat CS4 (PDF files) on Windows. Works well, but more trouble to configure than Mac OS X. Open File->Print menu. Click on Properties button and use Advanced tab to set a custom page size. Check orientation and scaling in the preview window. NOTE that Windows inserts a "hold" instruction in the print because it thinks you need to load a special cut sheet of paper. You need to "continue" your job from the front panel of the printer, once it has been released from the web form.
    Click here for detailed instructions for Acrobat on Windows
  • Adobe PhotoShop CS4 on Mac OS X. Works well. Configure same as Acrobat on Mac OS X.
  • Adobe PhotoShop CS4 on Windows. Works well, but more trouble to configure than Mac OS X. Configure same as Acrobat on Windows.
  • PowerPoint. NOT TESTED. Recommend you convert final print to PDF, specifying the correct print size, and then print from Acrobat.


ESCHER printer

The big poster on the wall behind Escher shows how to print on Escher using the CS2 versions of Adobe software. The lab computers now have CS4. Some menus and dialog boxes may differ slightly.

Coming soon - updated instructions on the web!

Sending a Print
  1. Prints must be sent and released from computers in the G.R.I.D. lab.
  2. Select "Print" in your application and choose the printer name (Ptolemy or Escher). Follow instructions linked above to set paper size and other parameters for the printer you have selected.
  3. Go to the release form and look for your job. They can take a minute or so to appear. Refresh your browser until your job appears. Each job is listed with the user's SUNet ID, the file name, the computer name that it was sent from, and the time it was sent.
  4. Fill in the P-T-A information for the account that will pay the printer charges. Also fill in your advisor, the print size and number of copies requested, and the purpose. Click on the "Release" button when done.
  5. Check the front panel of the printer to make sure the print is being received. Escher can only receive and print one job at a time. Ptolemy has a large internal hard disk and can receive additional new jobs from pangea while it is working on a previous one. It has a job queue on the front control panel. Jobs can be identified by their date and time. Jobs submitted from Mac OS X will also show the file name on the control panel.
  6. See the common problems page for help with printing problems such as running out of paper or toner or the job appears to be held by the printer.
  7. You will be charged for all prints released. Email the G.R.I.D. lab manager if you released a print and nothing came out or it was incomplete, so the charge can be adjusted. Provide the date and time that the print was submitted, the name of the computer that you used, the intended size, and the amount actually printed.
Other Printing facilities

If the printers are busy or you don't want to deal with printing something yourself, there are printers also located in Visual Arts (in the Medical Center), Meyer Library, and Kinko's in Palo Alto. Of course, these will be more expensive.