Poster printing Guide

Whatever tool you use, PowerPoint, Illustrator, LATeX, you must first print to a PostScript file and view the PostScript with gv. Check that everything you want to see shows up correctly. Alos check that the poster has the right size.

Previewing the poster with Ghostview

Open the ghostviewer (crunch% gv & ). In the top left hand corner click on State and then Setup Options. Under < Media Sizes add
        POSTER,        3024    4536
below the last entry (#DL, 312  624) in alignment with the above columns and click Save. 42 in * 72 is 3024 dpi and 63 in * 72 is 4536 dpi, which is the size of the poster paper. Change the magnification to 0.100 and then select the custom size POSTER from the menu (in this order!) BEFORE opening the file. Otherwise it will take about five minutes to open the full scale file.

Printing on the plotter

If everything looks good in the ghostviewer, then print the PostScript file (crunch% lp -d dj800 myfile.ps), incase of a LATeX poster, or print directly to the dj800 printer from the Windows 2000 server. Once the job appears on the queue, alert a system administrator and they will enable the poster printer dj800.

How to make a PowerPoint poster

The first way to make a poster is to use MS PowerPoint. Specify a page size of 42 inch by 48 inch, or smaller. Make sure that the bottom of the PowerPoint screen displays the size of the poster as 36x48, or something like that.
From PowerPoint print the poster with file->print and select the Adobe PDFWriter printer. Do not select the dj800 printer directly. Some fonts will not come out looking good. You will need to specify a file to save the PDF format in.
Then open the PDF file in Acrobat reader from the Windows 2000 server. Printing the PDF file directly from UNIX will result in a small picture 11x8.5. Make sure that the Acrobat Reader recognizes the correct size. Then print to the HP DesignJet printer.
Next click on "Properties". The default page is "Postscript page size size". If it says anything else, change it to "Postscript custom page size" and enter the correct size and click on "OK". Then select "Landscape". The paper is 42 inch wide and that is considered the width of the paper as if it were a sheet. Therefore a poster of 36x48 must be printed in landscape mode. Then click "OK" to exit the "Properties" panel. Finally click "OK" to print.

How to make a Illustrator poster

This software is much more powerful and can incorporate PostScript generated with LaTeX. However, it is much harder to use than PowerPoint.

How to make a LaTeX poster

1. Download the files UFposter.tex, blank.ps, and LetterShape.eps ( LetterShape.eps must be unzipped from dtpshapu.zip and renamed appropriately. That is crunch% unzip dtpshapu.zip and then crunch% mv dtpshapu.eps LetterShape.eps.) from the website www.phys.ufl.edu/~pjh/posters/poster_howto_UF.html. The poster_resize script is not necessary. The UFposter.tex file is the LaTeX poster template which references the blank.ps and LetterShape.eps files. A color version of the UF logo ( LetterShape.eps  is black and white.) can be found by searching the UF homepage www.ufl.edu. Make sure to get a high resolution logo.

2. Fill in the template and compile it (crunch% latex UFposter.tex) on CRUNCH or your local machine using the Special Format poster setting. Information regarding the Special Format size as well as other sizes like A3 and A4 is given in the header of the UFposter.tex file. This will generate the file UFposter.dvi. Do not view this file because it always looks incorrect.

*Note that the Special Format setting produces a four column poster by default. The following instructions only apply to the Special Format four column poster. More or less columns may be used with the Special Format as well as other formats, but the resizing of the resulting poster will most likely differ from that given below.

3. Convert the UFposter.dvi file to a postscript (crunch% dvips -o UFposter.ps UFposter.dvi). The resulting file UFposter.ps can be viewed in the ghostviewer using the BBox setting. Remember that this is a Special Format file and will not print properly on letter sized paper. To create a letter sized draft that may be printed on lj or lj5 use psresize (crunch% psresize -pletter -W1106 -H905 UFposter.ps UFletter.ps). 905 x 1106 dpi is approximately 319.2 mm x 390 mm, which is the Special Format.

4. An untidy poster is one whose borders lie on the edge of the page. In printing, the borders are cropped by the printer and the resulting poster does not look very nice. Nevertheless, an untidy poster can be created by using psresize again (crunch% psresize -W1106 -H905 -w2728.575 -h3334.59 UFposter.ps UFalmostfinal.ps). This produces a large poster that is scaled by a factor of 4.5 from letter size. 8.5 in * 4.5 is 2728.575 dpi and 11 in * 4.5 is 3334.59 dpi. This size makes a perfect sized poster. However the borders will be untidy. A perfect poster can be made by positioning the file UFalmostfinal.ps within the bounding box of another LaTeX file.

5. Create another LaTeX file called UFfinal.tex. Copy the following into it:
        \documentclass[12pt]{article}
        \usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts,amsthm,amstext,amsbsy,amssymb,amsopn,epsfig}
        \begin{document}
        \thispagestyle{empty}
        \begin{figure}[htbp]
        \hbox{\scalebox{1}{\includegraphics*[-40,40][0,-1000]{UFalmostfinal.ps}}}
        \end{figure}
        \end{document}
This confines the untidy poster UFalmostfinal.ps to a bounding box which is now centered with respect to the 42 inch x 63 inch poster paper.

6. Compile UFfinal.tex on CRUNCH or your local machine (crunch% latex UFfinal.tex). This produces the file UFfinal.dvi ,which should not be viewed. Convert UFfinal.dvi to a postscript (crunch% dvips -o UFfinal.ps UFfinal.dvi). The resulting file UFfinal.ps can be viewed in the ghostviewer using a customized size setting.

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