Tiled printing is a method that computer program

Computer program

A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...

s use to enable users to print images larger than a standard page, recently popularized by a program called The Rasterbator. A tiled printing program overlays a grid

Grid (spatial index)

In the context of a spatial index, a grid is a regular tessellation of a manifold or 2-D surface that divides it into a series of contiguous cells, which can then be assigned unique identifiers and used for spatial indexing purposes...

 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 computer

Mainframe computer

Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...

s. Programs were available to convert images to ASCII art

ASCII art

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters...

 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

The Print Shop

The Print Shop is a basic desktop publishing software package developed in the early 1980s by Brøderbund. It was unique in that it provided libraries of clip-art and templates through a simple interface to build signs, posters and banners with household dot-matrix printers...

, a 1980s software package.

Inexpensive ink jet printers now allow people to make tiled printouts that do not sacrifice the original image's resolution. These decorations are sometimes called rasterbations, after a popular tiled printing program, "The Rasterbator."

World records

Rasterbation is often the subject of record-breaking attempts

World record

A world record is usually the best global performance ever recorded and verified in a specific skill or sport. The book Guinness World Records collates and publishes notable records of all types, from first and best to worst human achievements, to extremes in the natural world and beyond...

 to create the largest and most impressive tiled prints. The title of the world's largest rasterbation was previously held by "the Doomtech crew". However, in June 2007 the graduating class of the University of Toronto Schools

University of Toronto Schools

The University of Toronto Schools is an independent secondary day school affiliated with the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, Canada...

, a Toronto

Toronto

Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

 high school, produced a rasterbation incorporating 1462 sheets of 8.5"x14" legal-sized paper. This achievement surpassed the previous record by over two hundred sheets, but then was overtaken by a group from Groton School

Groton School

Groton School is a private, Episcopal, college preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts, U.S. It enrolls approximately 375 boys and girls, from the eighth through twelfth grades...

 in May, 2008. The Groton School

Groton School

Groton School is a private, Episcopal, college preparatory boarding school located in Groton, Massachusetts, U.S. It enrolls approximately 375 boys and girls, from the eighth through twelfth grades...

 Rasterbation used more than 1500 sheets of 11x14" paper and was 100' tall, making it the largest ever. The Groton School rasterbation was made by a team of only six consisting of Ian MacLellan, Piers MacNughton, Lacarnly Creech, Hannah Jeton, Theodore Frelinghuysen and Chris Pitsiokos.

Applications

• The Rasterbator - a popular tiled printing application for Windows, which is free
  Free software
  Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
  
   and open source
  Open source
  The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
  
   software
• Rasterbator-NG - a Rasterbator version that works with Linux
  Linux
  Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
  
   and Mac OS X
  Mac OS X
  Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
  
  
• Block Posters - online application that creates any size pdf posters from any size image (free)
• Faster Poster - another online application that creates any size pdf posters from any size image (free) using any size media. It is also available as free
  Free software
  Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
  
   and open source
  Open source
  The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
  
   software at sourceforge.net
• PosteRazor - a graphical multi-platform tiled printing application that takes bitmap images as input and creates a multi-page PDF document (free)
• pdfposter - a command line tiled printing application for PDF files (free)
• poster(1) - a command line tiled printing application for PostScript
  PostScript
  PostScript is a dynamically typed concatenative programming language created by John Warnock and Charles Geschke in 1982. It is best known for its use as a page description language in the electronic and desktop publishing areas. Adobe PostScript 3 is also the worldwide printing and imaging...
  
  files (free)

Articles

• "Freebie Rasterbator Makes Arty-Looking Posters" - PC World, April 8, 2010
• "Turn Photos Into Wall-Size Posters", PC World, May 13, 2009
• "Rasterbate in your dorm room", Dakota Student, August 25, 2006
• "Rasterbate More: Slap a pixelated Larry on your wall", The Harvard Crimson, December 9, 2004