Creating a Life Poster with Windows

In yesterday's computer users group, a question came up about printing photos, and after answering the question somehow the conversation came around to a project I embarked on a few weeks ago. I stumbled on a popular web site blog for Mac users called "Creating a Life Poster" by Mike Matas [1]. I immediately became enamored with the idea of creating a "Life Poster" for my home. The thought of displaying 96 of my favorite photos in poster format really appealed to me. Remember that I said the site and instructions that I came across were for a Macintosh computer using the iPhoto program and it was a snap. I hunted and hunted for a PC based program (and even an Ubuntu Linux program) that could duplicate the Life Poster format (recommended 12 rows and 8 columns for a 20" X 30" poster). Days of searching turned up nothing significant. I found plenty of do-it-yourself schlepping the photos on a Photoshop or publishing program canvas one by one by one, but nothing as automated and quick as the iPhoto solution on the Mac.

There is a Life Poster site for PC users [2] that sells a $25 program that will help create posters with some neat designs and can print them for you too. And I found a cool tutorial for creating a Life Poster with Paint Shop Pro [3]. And even Picasa has a collage maker, but the pictures all come out square instead of in the 2:3 ratio of a normal photo. None of these fit the bill for the solution that I wanted; something easy to use, preferably free or cheap to download, and compelling enough to teach others about it.

Then it hit me, how about Shutterfly [4]! I surfed over to the Shutterfly web site and looked at their Shutterfly Studio software that is free to download and promised the ability to create photo projects of all types...including a "Life Poster". I have been using Shutterfly for years to print photo books, regular prints, and other projects with my digital photos and use them even more now that my old site, Club Photo, bit the dust. I downloaded and installed the software, and within a half hour created my first Life Poster (see the thumbnail picture at the left).

The hardest part was titrating 8 years of digital photos into 96 of my favorites. It couldn't be done, so with much difficulty I came up with 192 of my favorites and created TWO posters. I uploaded them to Shutterfly and within four days, the beautiful posters were delivered to my door for what I consider the bargain price of $23 each! It cost twice that to frame them, but they look awesome in our family room and I'm sure will provide us with year's of enjoyment.

I think I can convince Adam to present this project as a future Digital Photography Users Group topic. If you would be interested in seeing this as a DP Users Group topic, leave a comment here. Or if you are a web visitor and would like to see a Video Tip with step-by-step of this project, leave a comment as well.

If this helped, consider buying me a beer or an Americano! [5]