An A1 poster tiled across A4 sheets
A1 is 594 by 841 mm, the size used for conference poster sessions and large shop displays. It has the area of eight A4 sheets. A print shop charges around twenty dollars for one; tiling it at home costs paper and ink.
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Sheet orientation turns nine pages into eight
Tiled onto portrait A4, an A1 poster needs three columns (594 divided by 210) and three rows (841 divided by 297), which is nine sheets. Turn the A4 landscape at 297 by 210 mm and it becomes exactly two columns and four rows, which is eight. One sheet fewer also means fewer seams, so the result looks better. The tool tries both orientations and keeps the smaller grid.
Printing your own conference poster
Poster sessions usually specify A0 or A1, and a print shop wants the file days in advance. Tiling lets you fix a graph the night before and reprint on the morning of the session. Because there will be seams, leave gutters in your layout so a join never crosses a photograph or a chart. If the poster is going into a tube, let the adhesive dry for half an hour before you roll it.
An efficient order for eight sheets
Lay all the pages on the floor in label order, A-1 through D-2, and check the artwork lines up. Then join each column into a strip: A-1, B-1, C-1, D-1 becomes one long band and the second column becomes another. Finally join the two bands along one straight line. Doing the fiddly joins first and the long one last pushes any accumulated error out to the edge.
Frequently asked questions
How many A4 sheets make an A1?
Eight by area. Even with the default 5 mm margin and 5 mm flap it still fits on eight, because the tool turns the A4 landscape and uses a 2 by 4 grid. Force portrait sheets and you get nine.
What image resolution do I need?
The 841 mm long edge needs about 4970 pixels for 150 dpi and about 9930 for full 300 dpi print quality. For something viewed from a metre or more, 100 dpi (roughly 3300 pixels) is fine. Phone photos are typically around 4000 pixels on the long edge, which is just enough for A1.
What does the ink cost?
Eight full-bleed colour A4 pages on a consumer inkjet run to roughly two to four dollars. A print shop charges fifteen to thirty for a single A1, so for a one-off display the tiled version is far cheaper.