Tiled printing

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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.

Tiled printing has been widespread since the days of mainframe computers. An early example is the Unix banner program which created very large printable text banners out of ASCII characters in some Unix variants. 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. 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.