Print your reference at the size of your canvas
Type your canvas size and get a multi-page PDF that prints the photo at actual size across A4 or Letter sheets, with overlap, corner marks and an optional drawing grid. Free, no signup, and the photo never leaves your browser.
Drop the photo you want to print at canvas size
JPG, PNG or WebP · paste works too · stays on your device
or try a sample
How it works
How to print an image across multiple pages at actual size
Three steps from a photo to a stack of sheets that tape together into a print the exact size of your canvas.
- 1
Upload the photo and type the finished size
Drop a JPG, PNG or WebP, then enter the width and height of your canvas, board or wall section in cm, inches or feet. The readout shows at once how many sheets it takes, how big each grid square prints and how much the photo is enlarged. Keep the link on to let the height follow the photo, or type both sides for a real canvas.
- 2
Fit the photo to the canvas, pick the paper, add the grid
If the canvas is a different shape, crop the photo to its ratio or keep the whole photo with margins. Choose A4 or Letter, the orientation and how much neighbouring sheets overlap. Switch on the square grid with A1 labels if you are going to transfer the drawing, and grayscale if you want to judge values.
- 3
Download the PDF, print at 100 %, tape the sheets
The PDF opens with an assembly map that shows which sheet goes where; every sheet carries its position, the overlap and the cell size in its caption. Print all pages at 100 % — never “Fit to page” — check one square with a ruler, then trim or fold the overlap strips, line up the corner marks and tape the joins on the back. The result is a poster-style print at the true size of your canvas.
Shape before size
Crop the photo to your canvas ratio first
A photo and a canvas rarely have the same proportions, and a photo should never be stretched to make them agree.
Why a 4 × 6 photo does not fit an 11 × 14 canvas. A 4 × 6 print is 2:3; an 11 × 14 canvas is closer to 4:5. Enlarge the photo until it is 11 inches wide and it is 16.5 inches tall — 2.5 inches more than the canvas. Enlarge it until it is 14 inches tall and it is only 9.3 inches wide, leaving a strip of bare canvas on each side. Painters on forums answer this question every week, and the answer is always the same: do not stretch the image. Decide what to do with the difference before you draw a single grid line.
Crop to canvas ratio takes the largest part of the photo that has the canvas’s shape, centred, and the slider lets you move it along the photo to keep the part you care about — the face, the horizon. The tool tells you how much is cut (about 15 % of the long side for the 4 × 6 on 11 × 14).
Keep the whole photo pads the picture with white margins to the canvas’s shape instead, so nothing is lost and you choose on the canvas what fills the margins. The grid covers the margins too, so the cells stay square and the canvas size stays exact.
Either way the printed size is the one you typed, and the grid squares come out at a size you can measure. If you need to rotate or straighten the photo first, or want a free-hand crop, do it in the grid maker, which has the same actual-size tiled printing in its PDF & print dialog.
For the transfer
Add a grid and labels for the transfer
Printed at the real size of the canvas, the gridded reference becomes a one-to-one template: a square on the print is the same square on the canvas.
Turn on the grid and pick the number of columns. The cells are square, their size is worked out from your canvas width, and it is printed in every sheet’s caption — 30 cm across with 6 columns gives 5 cm squares. Rule the same squares lightly on the canvas, or lay the taped print beside it, and copy one cell at a time. The A1, B2 … labels keep your place on a large grid, which is where most transfer mistakes happen.
Grid only prints the same sheets with just the lines and labels on white, at the same size. Tape them behind thin paper or canvas on a window or lightbox and you can trace the grid straight through, or use them as a ruling guide. That is the fastest way to transfer a drawing to canvas without measuring every line.
Grayscale prints the reference in black and white, so the values are easier to compare while you paint and the print costs less ink. The grid method itself is explained step by step on the grid method guide.
Print to scale
For murals and walls
Enter the size in feet to see what a wall takes, then decide whether to print the whole thing or to scale the grid up by hand.
A 4 × 3 ft section of wall is about 30 A4 sheets; an 8 × 10 ft wall about 180, and this page stops at 200 sheets. Up to that size you can print the reference at actual size, tape it together and transfer from it directly, or pin it to the wall and prick or pounce the outline through.
Beyond that, scale the grid instead of the print. The mural grid works at any ratio: print the gridded reference small, and rule the wall with the same number of squares, each as many times larger as the wall is than the print. Lettering artists put it simply: one inch on the sketch is one foot on the wall. A reference printed 12 × 16 in with 1-inch squares becomes a 12 × 16 ft wall with 1-foot squares — a 1:12 scale drawing, and every proportion lands where it should. Set the columns here so that the squares come out at a round size (type the print size in inches, read the square size in the caption), and the scale factor is yours to choose.
The same arithmetic covers the common cases a projector would otherwise do: an 8 × 10 in reference to a 16 × 20 in canvas is 2×, to a 24 × 30 in canvas 3×. Our cell size calculator gives the square size for any paper or canvas without printing anything.
FAQ
Questions about printing at canvas size
- How do I print a picture larger than A4?
- Upload it here, type the finished size and download the PDF. The picture is split across as many A4 or Letter sheets as it needs — tile printing, as some printer drivers call it, or a PDF poster print — with a shared overlap strip and corner marks on every sheet and an assembly map on the first page. Print every page at 100 % and tape the sheets together. It works from any PDF viewer and keeps the size exact.
- How many sheets will it take?
- The readout shows it before you download. As a rule of thumb, divide the canvas width by 18 cm and the height by 26 cm on A4 portrait (7 in by 9.5 in on Letter) and round up, because each sheet has 1 cm margins and shares a 1 cm overlap with its neighbour. A 30 × 40 cm canvas takes 4 sheets, 16 × 20 in takes 9, a 4 × 3 ft wall section about 30. The page builds PDFs of up to 200 sheets.
- Why does my 4×6 photo not fit an 11×14 canvas?
- They are different shapes. A 4 × 6 print is 2:3; an 11 × 14 canvas is nearer 4:5. Scale the photo to 11 in wide and it is 16.5 in tall, 2.5 in too much; scale it to 14 in tall and it is only 9.3 in wide. Stretching it to fit would distort the picture, so you either crop about 15 % off the long side — Crop to canvas ratio does that, centred, with a slider to choose which part goes — or keep the whole photo and leave white margins on the canvas.
- Can I print only the grid?
- Yes. With the grid switched on, set Pages to Grid only: the same sheets with just the lines and labels on white, at the same size, so you can transfer through them on a lightbox or use them to rule the grid onto thin paper. For a blank grid with an exact cell size on a single sheet, the printable grid paper page is quicker. Printable grid paper
- Does the photo get uploaded?
- No. The photo is decoded, cropped, gridded and written into the PDF by your browser with the HTML canvas; nothing is sent to a server, and the download is created on your device.
- Why must the printer be at 100 % / actual size?
- Each PDF page is the exact size of the paper, and the picture is placed on it at the exact millimetres you asked for. Any “Fit to page”, “Shrink to printable area” or percentage scaling in the print dialog shrinks the picture — usually by 3–6 % — so the sheets no longer line up and the squares no longer measure what the caption says. Print one sheet first and check a square with a ruler against the cell size printed in its caption.