Creating a Mural of Tiles out of a Big Picture

Here we have an image of some horses with the rockie mountains as a back drop

The resolution of our image is 228 by 228. For a laser it should not fall below 100 dpi. For sublimation I would keep this number at about 200dpi

The size of our image is 8.771 by 6.578. Let us assume we are using 3 by 3 inch tiles. For this excursive I want to use an image that is 15 inches by 12 inches. Thus we need 5 tiles long (5 x 3) and 4 tiles high (4 X 3). Before we can go on we need to make our image 15 by 12 with a resolution of 100 if we are doing it on a laser machine.

The problem is if we just drag our image and make it bigger than our resolution will be to small. To reduce the effect of enlarging the image we will use the resample command (1) that is found in CorelDraw.

First of all make sure that the image size will retain the original aspect ratio (1). Type in a width of 15 (2). You will notice that the height goes to 11.25 (3) automatically which is to small for the 12 that we need. As I only need 150 DPI i have entered this in for the Horizontal (4) and the vertical (5) resolution. Notice that the file size has increased in as per the red box. Make sure that you have unchecked “anti-alias (6). What I need to do is to enter in 12 for the height.

First enter in 12 for the height. (1) This will change width to 16 (2). Click on “OK”

We need to crop the image down to 15 by 12. We do this by selecting the crop tool (1)

While holding down your left mouse button drag and create a selection or crop box. Do not worry about the size we will correct this in the next step

First we need to type in 15 for the width (1) and 12 for the height (2). Press enter.

Place the selection box on top of the original image. Remember that anything outside the box will be gone once we accept the crop.

Double click on the selection or crop box to accept the crop.

Go to the toolbox and select the Graph Paper (1). The hot key is “D”

As per the beginning of this article we know that we are creating 3 by 3 tiles. Thus we need 4 tiles tall and 5 tiles wide. Type in 4 for the height (1) and 5 for the width (2).

While holding down your left mouse button drag and create the stock graph paper

We should have a setup as per the above.

Select the graph paper and type in 15 wide (1) and 12 (2) tall.

First we need to select the graph and the picture together. Drag a selection box around the two. Press the letters “C” and than “E”. This will center the two.

Press the Tab button until the picture is selected. You will know the picture is selected as the pictures name is at the bottom in the status bar

Select EFFECTS (1) | POWERCLIP (2) | PLACE INSIDE CONTAINER (3).

When you select “Place Inside Container” your cursor will change into a black arrow. Click inside the Gird, This means that we want the grid to powerclip our photo

If you get this error message than you did not have the photo selected. Click “No” go back and make sure the photo is selected and repeat.

Make sure that you have the powerclipped image and grid selected. Now go to ARRANGE (1) | UNGROUP(2)

You can now separate the image from each of the other grids. Notice that the grid that I selected is a 3 by 3 grid (1), Now all I have to do is to remove the pen outline.

Make sure that the 3 by 3 image is still selected. Than select the Pen tool (1). Than None (2).

You can see that my picture is 3 by 3 and it has now outline. Now we can laser the image onto tiles or sublimate the image onto tiles