I need/want to make an A3 (or slightly less) size picture made up of lots of digital photos for a friend. Have access to a good colour laser to print it. Anyone know the best software to do it thats not Photoshop ? I have paint shop pro and thats about it other than word etc ?

What’s wrong with photoshop? If its the cost you could try GIMP.

photoshop – time, cost
PSP – I have already

GIMP

what about Picasa for layout and then GIMP to tweak/enlarge..

I’m not sure I understand the question – if you have PSP, why not just use it ?

I use PSE6 but PSP should be able to do this:

open a new (blank) image at A3 dimensions

cut and paste / move tool to add the photos you want to the new canvas and position them as you want. Use layers for each added image, if you can, so you can alter the images individually.

check that the brightness / saturation are roughly the same for all images or it may look strange. If any are really out, then delete them from the new canvas and edit the photo before adding the newly edited version.

when you have it

PSP is brilliant and the perfect tool for the job. Just be aware that unless you pre-resize the images you use you could end up manipulating and then trying to print several hundred mbs of images and things could slow down quite considerably.

Do you mean multiple different digital pictures that you want to lay out, or do you want to stitch a big panorama together out of multiple images from the same place, and do it seamlessly?

If the first, then PSP should be fine.

If the second, then Hugin is very good, and is free.

Joe

Done this a few times using PaintShop Pro’s Print > Multiple images tool.
Might be worth lowering the compression on the pics first.
Maybe even pdf before printing.

If you use Word go through the Insert > Images > From file route as just pasting images in creates massive file sizes.

I would use PhotoShop or PaintShopPro. As said above, blank canvas, A3 size, add your photos, making sure they are the correct size & dpi before putting on the canvas.

Just remember the higher dpi, the more ram its gonna take up (1200dpi = 1gb i think).

Oh and dont use Jpegs!

Download 30 day trial copies of indesign and photoshop from adobe.com and use that for layout and image resizing.

Why wouldn’t you use jpegs for a laser printer job?

Why wouldn’t you use jpegs for a laser printer job?

It’s not that I wouldn’t use them for a laser printer job, I just try not to use them at all really..

Each time you save a jpeg the quality of the picture decreases, as the compression is re-applied. If I work with jpegs, I’ll convert them into uncompressed tiff’s and work with those.