Why do the sheets overlap?

So that the poster has no gaps or white lines where sheets meet. The overlap is printed on both sheets: one is trimmed at its cut marks and laid over the other, onto the strip inside the dashed line, where the glue goes. Set the overlap to 0 to butt the sheets edge to edge instead.

What margin should I set?

Most home printers cannot print the last 3 to 6 mm of a sheet, so the margin keeps every part of the poster where the printer can reach. The default 10 mm suits nearly every printer and leaves room for the cut marks and labels. A printer that prints borderless can use a smaller one.

Will a poster made from a PDF be blurry?

Not the text and drawings: the page is placed on each sheet as it is, so text, lines and shapes are as sharp at a metre wide as at A4. Photographs inside the PDF are only as sharp as they were. For a PNG or JPG the page shows how many pixels per inch it will print at; below about 100 it looks soft up close, though fine from across a room.

Is the PDF or picture uploaded to make the poster?

No. The poster is made in your browser and saved straight to your computer.

Stays on your computer How this works

PDF poster maker: print big on small paper

Split one page of a PDF, or a PNG or JPG, across as many A4 or Letter sheets as you like, with overlap, cut marks and an assembly map, to print a large poster at home - entirely in your browser

Drag & drop a PDF, PNG or JPG here, or browse

One page becomes a poster of many sheets · nothing is uploaded

About this PDF poster maker

A poster, a large map, a floor plan or a banner rarely fits on paper you can print at home. This page enlarges one page of a PDF, or a PNG or JPG, and divides it into a grid of ordinary sheets - A4, Letter, A3, Legal or Tabloid - so you can print them on any printer and stick them together into one large picture. Choose how big: so many sheets across and down, a final width in centimetres or inches, or a scale.

Neighbouring sheets overlap by a few millimetres, so there is no gap when they are glued, and cut marks show where to trim. Each sheet is labelled with its row and column, and the first page is a map of the whole poster with the grid drawn over it. A PDF page stays a PDF page: its text and lines are placed on each sheet as they are, not turned into a picture, so they stay sharp however large you print. Nothing is uploaded. It is free to use, with no account and no upload limit, and it runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded, and while the page stays open, a feature you have already used keeps working offline.

What you can do

Make a poster from any page of a PDF, or from a PNG or JPG
Print on A4, Letter, A3, Legal or Tabloid sheets, portrait or landscape
Size the poster by sheets across and down, by its final width in cm or inches, or as a percentage
Set the overlap between sheets and the margin your printer cannot print in
Add cut marks, a dashed line round each glue strip, a row and column label on each sheet, and an assembly map page
See the grid of sheets over the page before you save, with the final size and number of sheets
Keep the text and lines of a PDF page as vectors, sharp at any size; for a picture, see how many pixels per inch it will print at
Save everything as one PDF to print

How to print a poster on several pages

Drop the PDF or picture onto the page, and pick the page if the PDF has several.
Choose the paper, then the size: sheets across and down, a final width, or a scale. The preview shows the grid.
Press Make the poster PDF, and print it at actual size (100%), not "fit to page".
Trim the left and top margins along the cut marks (all but the first column and row), then lay each sheet over its neighbour, matching the picture, and glue.

Questions

Why do the sheets overlap?: So that the poster has no gaps or white lines where sheets meet. The overlap is printed on both sheets: one is trimmed at its cut marks and laid over the other, onto the strip inside the dashed line, where the glue goes. Set the overlap to 0 to butt the sheets edge to edge instead.
What margin should I set?: Most home printers cannot print the last 3 to 6 mm of a sheet, so the margin keeps every part of the poster where the printer can reach. The default 10 mm suits nearly every printer and leaves room for the cut marks and labels. A printer that prints borderless can use a smaller one.
Will a poster made from a PDF be blurry?: Not the text and drawings: the page is placed on each sheet as it is, so text, lines and shapes are as sharp at a metre wide as at A4. Photographs inside the PDF are only as sharp as they were. For a PNG or JPG the page shows how many pixels per inch it will print at; below about 100 it looks soft up close, though fine from across a room.
Is the PDF or picture uploaded to make the poster?: No. The poster is made in your browser and saved straight to your computer.

To rotate the page or split it out of a long PDF first, use the PDF Toolkit; to turn several photos into a PDF, JPG to PDF.