Creating Large Format Cyanotypes Negatives At Home

Materials Needed:

– Paper Sheer
or
– Razor and straight edge
– Tape.

Not every Cyanotype idea fits inside a 8 1/2” x 11” page, and they don’t have to.
We made a way to make larger format Cyanotypes at home!

Pages and Sizes

From a single page ~8.5 x 11in up to 24 pages, 47.” x 38″ in printable image.

Pages 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 All retain a solid black/white optional border around the image to tape back together and not overlap the image.
Sizes 9, 12 , 15, 20, 24 will all have a middle pages with no border. tape over the DARKEST area of the image on the seem.

2 Sheets, 12.5″ X 10″

6 Sheets, 23.5″ x 18.8″

9 Sheets, 29.38″ x 23.5″

12 Sheets, 31.5″ x 25.3″

24 Sheets 47.5 x 38″

No Overlaps

Printers don’t print to the edge of the page, a small print margin is unique to each printer (Grey blue outer border of each page). Since each printer manufacturers print margin is slightly different this an adjustable margin for printers to set.
Each page then prints an overlap section of the image outside the dotted line to be trimmed away and matched back together.

The clearest example of why this method works is the area of the dorsal fin on the left 2 sheets.

Imagery below the dotted line on sheet 1 (top) and imagery above the dotted line on sheet 3 (bottom) would be removed.

Rejoining image 1s remaining top and image 3 remaining bottom connects the fish’s dorsal fin at the single black dot.

The Process

Step 1: Select Size

From 9″ x 7.2″ to 45.7″ x 36.56″ and a lot of options in between.

Step 2: Adjust Printer Margin and Overlap

To configure to your own printers margin print a test page at 100% fill and note the blank margin in inches. That’s the unprintable edge. The Overlap will be the amount of image cut off from the dotted line.

Step 3: Download The Zip

Inside the .Zip folder you’ll find An assembly guide, A readme.txt (txt only assembly guide) and your files saved as PDF’s.
Print only at 100% actual pdf size.