Dave's Favorites: Make Huge Pictures With Digital Camera Poster Creator

What good is having an 8-megapixel camera when the biggest print you can make is an 8 by 10--because that's as big as your printer allows? And don't forget about your many-megapixel panoramas stitched together from individual images. No doubt you have some that would look great, if only you could print them at their full size.

Well, rather than buying an industrial poster press, you might try SRS1 Software's ($29) Digital Camera Poster Creator. This inexpensive shareware app lets you turn any digital image into a series of prints that you can assemble, like tiles, into an oversized print.

I tried Poster Creator with a few of my photos and was impressed with the results. Just open a picture and specify two important ingredients: the print size of each tile and how large those tiles should be with respect to the print. Together, these control the quality of your poster. The program keeps you informed about the output resolution each step of the way. Not only does it advise you of the dots per inch, but it also makes a general assessment like "good quality" or "fair from a distance."

This program is a blast to use and just might breathe new life into your pictures, since you finally have a way to print oversized posters for your living-room wall. This much is true: It sure beats buying a new printer!