Photos to Wall Art for Dummies

spliced photograph

We'd like to think that if we were to pull up Google (or Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, etc.) and search on a "how do you...?" question, we'd get useful information. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. It was even less likely in the heyday of content farms like eHow.com, where "contributors" routinely pounded out instructions for projects they had never actually attempted themselves (we think it's a sad state of affairs when the person "answering" a question knows even less than the person asking it). In our humble opinion, however, that's exactly what happens when you stumble across Chantel Alise at OurPastimes.com while looking for help on "How to Blow Up Photos for Wall Art."

Alise seemed to be confused from the get-go, opening with the offhand comment that,

"With all the digital cameras on the market today, almost anyone can take beautiful photographs. Some of these pieces even turn out to be worthy of being blown up into a poster-sized print."

All of which is fine, although we think "almost anyone" might be an overstatement. We did note, however, that Chantel seemed to be a bit confused about what a digital camera is, given that one of her instructions is to,

"Scan the photo into your computer."

So much for "digital"... So let's continue to read through Chantel's instructions and see what else seemed to be short of critical thought. We will allow that Alise has a point in suggesting the use of a photo-editing program to "tweak" the image, but hey: that's common sense. What gets a little more nonsensical is her notion that, once you've Photoshopped® the image, you need to move it to "a desktop-publishing program that allows for large prints" ; given that image software is far more likely to have the requisite drivers. But what do we know? we've never written a beauty blog...

Speaking of beauty, it's a safe assumption that anyone creating "wall art," whether poster-sized or big enough to cover an entire wall, will want the "cleanest" possible image, without seams and splices. Chantel's instructions, however, seem to ignore this assumption. Instead, she suggests that her readers,

"Move the photo into a stitch-together software program, such as Big Picture Program, if a regular-sized printer must be used. Set the printer to print the photo in sections. Once printed, piece the sections together with glue or tape."

That sounds... ugly! BTW, Alise seems to be confused here: stitch-together software assembles a large picture, e.g., a panoramic image, from multiple smaller images. Any printer driver will print a large document in sections; you don't need special software.

Once again, eHow.com paid an ignorant freelancer to create MSU¹ instructions and suggestions for a project even though she had no earthly idea what she was talking about. To make matters worse, Chantel's original (way back in 2008) included a suggestion to "[take] the photo to a photo business with blow-up capabilities; or [send] it to an online photo studio." 

Kinda makes us wonder who deserves a Dumbass of the Day award: Chantel? or the moron who edited out the useful stuff when it was ported to OutPastimes.com?

¹ MSU: Making Shit Up.

DD - PHOTOGRAPHY