Multi-Page PDF Banner/Poster from PDF

Question

I'm looking for a utility that will take one large sized PDF, and split it into smaller PDFs for banner/poster printing. Looking for a linux or multi-platform solution.

More Background

My goal is to take an Inkscape document and generate a PDF, then print it on a printer that doesn't do banner/poster printing automatically - so if there's a better solution, I'd be happy to hear that as well.

I've found exporting as a PNG both takes a while, and sometimes blends are not preserved. Printing as PDF (Ubuntu print-to-file) seems to work well. I've found utilities that can take large images formats and generate multipage PDFs, but not PDF to PDF.

Solution 1

Or posterazor?

Solution 2

Under Linux Mint Debian Edition (will be the same under Debian or Ubuntu) :

    apt-get install pdfposter

go in the directory where your file is, and type :

    pdfposter -p a1 original-file.pdf multipage-poster.pdf

where original-file.pdf is your existing file to split, multipage-poster.pdf is the new file to create, and A1 the desired poster's format. The original format is A4 by default.

More info by typing :

    pdfposter --help

Solution 3

I printed Alcatel Lucent LTE poster just now which is PDF format. In the printer property just choose scaling type 'Tile large paper'.

Solution 4

This should do it. Rasterbator lets you upload a large picture, splits it up and lets you download the smaller parts.

Solution 5

Just yesterday I was in a similar situation. I needed to print a .svg Inkscape vector graphics file onto several smaller sheets of paper (A4 portrait in my case) under Ubuntu Linux.

What I ended up was a hack but it worked for me in my case:

1. Reduce the document size to the size of your sheets.
2. Move your graphics so the top-left part of it fits within the document border.
3. Save the file as PDF.
4. Move the graphics to the left.
5. Repeat at 3 until you have the whole row saved as individual PDF-files. If you haven't exported the bottom part of your graphics yet, move the graphics up and repeat at 3.

This got the job done for my example of 8 sheets of paper.

View more solutions

Comments

[las3rjock]

Duplicate of superuser.com/questions/38819/…

[moneyt]

Not a duplicate, that was for XP, and asked for any way, I'm looking for specifically PDF to PDF, which none of the answers in that question (or this) provide AFAIK.

[Julien Kronegg]

7 years after posting, I used the accepted solution with success. The "off-topic because they become outdated quickly" doesn't look correct in this case ;-)

[moneyt]

@JulienKronegg Indeed. At least it took 5 years to close the question. :)

[moneyt]

Used it before, doesn't it also essentially pixelize (rasterize) it? That's the point of it - right? I don't believe you can give it a high resolution file and get the same resolution out.

[outsideblasts]

Well then this blockposters.com/default.aspx will probably have the same problem..?

[moneyt]

Looking for something that runs on Linux (or cross-platform), but the concept of a muti-page PDF printer would work great.

[moneyt]

PosteRazor works just fine for image file formats (I've used it), but doesn't support PDF as the input.

[moneyt]

For now it looks like Posterazor is the best bet. It won't do PDF to PDF, but as long as the file is postscript or an image file it works. It's what I had been using, and looks like what I'll stick with for now.

[Syed]

imgur.com/8KHVG here is the screenshot

[I say Reinstate Monica]

Your post needs to be expanded. In its current form it does not provide enough information to actually answer the OPs question. You should include specific steps to implement your solution and explain why/how your answer addresses the OPs question.

[Purnendu Kumar]

Currently I don't have 10 points hence i can-not add pictures. This will be approximately similar to the screenshot "Alcatel.Lucent" posted above in the reply of this question.

[Burgi]

This is a very low quality answer and probably should have been flagged as such back in 2009. It is unlikely that the poster will edit to improve this now. I would recommend investigating the other solutions here first.

[Julien Kronegg]

Does not work under Windows 10 (installation fails)

[starbeamrainbowlabs]

Note that it doesn't provide any overlap for easy glueing, so it can be a bit fiddly.

[starbeamrainbowlabs]

In theory you could export the svg as a high-resolution png, and then use imagemagick to generate the tiles automagickally.

[MadMike]

@starbeamrainbowlabs I wonder why you post this as a comment to my answer. Why not try it out and make a ful answer of the idea?

[MUY Belgium]

Cool, but I do not understand the way you ave choosed...

[josch]

@TimLytle there is now plakativ which is like posterazor but uses PDF as input.