Poster Print Grid, True Size Across Multiple Pages
Your printer is A4. Your canvas isn't. Print your gridded reference tiled across several pages with cut and glue marks, assembled, a 2 cm cell measures 2 cm.
How the tiling works
- Set your real target size. Canvas presets from A5 to A0 and common canvas formats, in centimetres or inches.
- Export as poster. The planner splits the image into printer pages with solid cut lines, dashed glue lines and a position footer on every sheet ("Page 3 of 6, row 1 / col 3").
- Cut, glue, done. Cut along the solid edge, glue each page onto its neighbour's dashed line. The overlap absorbs printer margins, so the assembled sheet stays at true scale. Cutting, gluing and the overlap that makes it work are written up in how to print a grid over multiple pages.
Made for real-size work
The poster export exists for one job: a reference or grid you can lay on a 50 × 70 canvas or tape to a wall, at the size you'll actually paint. Page counts adapt to your printer paper, A4, A3, Letter, Legal and Tabloid all work, and a 60-page cap keeps mural-size projects honest. Before the first sheet goes through the printer, check that the file carries the pixels for the size you named: how to check the real print size of a reference. A whole wall taken from a small sketch is worked through in scaling a sketch to a wall with the mural grid method.
What to use it with
Tiling is the last step, and four pages sit in front of it. The cell size that gets tiled comes from the grid maker for drawing, which works from your canvas rather than from a square count. Lettered and numbered cells, so that page 3 of 6 can be talked about, come from the image grid maker. If the sheet you draw on fits your printer after all, the grid goes straight onto it instead: transfer drawing to canvas. And when nothing has to sit under the grid at all, the ready-made sheets are the printable drawing grids.
Work built this way, cell by cell at wall size, is the subject of the grid art page.
Frequently asked questions
- How accurate is the assembled poster?
- The pages are generated at a fixed physical scale, printed at 100 % (never "Fit to page"), a 2 cm grid cell measures 2 cm on the assembled sheet.
- How many pages will my size need?
- The poster dialog shows the exact page count before you export, it depends on your target size, printer paper and overlap.
- Can I print just the grid, without the photo?
- Yes, hide the image before exporting and the poster carries the grid alone, or use "Transfer to paper" for a faint grid printed directly on your drawing sheet.