Making Posters with AI Art!
Howto & Style
Introduction
AI art has often been criticized for producing tiny, blurry images. But I've taken a deep dive into the potential of AI-generated art and discovered a way to create stunning, poster-sized images. Let's go through the process step-by-step.
Getting Started
I began by sourcing inspiration for the poster designs. After purchasing a medium format printer and dealing with some alignment issues, I was ready to put it to work. The struggle was deciding what to depict—cats, dogs, unicorns, rainbows, pizza—the options were endless. After days of doomscrolling through Pinterest and filling up my poster inspo board, I finally narrowed it down.
Choosing the Art
I decided to create a few different posters: a sappy inspirational quote piece, a cool cyberpunk piece, some general artsy designs, and maybe a movie poster. Using my MidJourney organization tips, I created a new thread in my personal Discord server for this project. MidJourney had just updated their V4 engine to support arbitrary aspect ratios, making it easier to create images that fit the poster size.
Generating the Designs
Several of my initial designs turned out beautifully, though not all on the first try. I generated multiple images for each idea:
- A beautiful image of a night in the woods.
- A couple of samurais watching the sunset.
- A painterly shot of a dude on a cliffside.
- 80s movie poster style images.
Upscaling the Images
Next, I used Topaz Gigapixel and the Remacri algorithm to upscale these images, ensuring they looked crisp at poster size. The default sizes of 1024x1024 and 2048x2048 from MidJourney wouldn't cut it for poster quality.
Editing and Printing
Once the images were upscaled, I spent hours in Affinity and Photoshop tweaking the designs. I cleared up artifacts, adjusted the color and sharpness, and added text where needed. For printing, I used 13x19 inch matte paper on my Canon PIXMA ip8720 printer. Each design had its specific tweaks:
- Motivational Poster: Added a high pass filter layer to make the colors pop.
- Samurais: Minor color and sharpness adjustments.
- Knight Poster: Simple edits, added some text.
- 80s Synthwave Poster: Created from scratch due to unsatisfactory AI-generated designs.
Results
The prints turned out great except for the samurai print, which I wasn't happy with and tried to improve using lacquer, which didn’t work out. However, prints on glossy photo paper turned out exceptionally well, especially the movie poster design.
Conclusion
Yes, AI art can be printed in poster sizes with great results. Some manual work and upscaling are necessary, but the potential is impressive. Keep creating, keep iterating, and remember to Be Kind Rewind.
Keywords
- AI Art
- Poster Printing
- MidJourney
- Topaz Gigapixel
- Affinity
- Photoshop
- Upscaling
- Printer
FAQ
Q: Can AI art be printed in high resolution for posters? A: Yes, with proper upscaling and editing, AI-generated art can be printed at high resolutions suitable for posters.
Q: What software is recommended for editing AI art? A: Affinity and Photoshop are great for tweaking and finalizing designs.
Q: What should I do if my AI-generated image is too blurry? A: Use upscaling software like Topaz Gigapixel and focus on manual adjustments in image editing software.
Q: Is there a specific type of paper that works best for poster printing? A: It depends on the design. Glossy photo paper works well for high-contrast images, while matte paper can be better for painterly or vintage posters.
Q: How can I fix artifacts in AI-generated art? A: Tools like content-aware fill, quick select, healing brush, and clone stamps in Photoshop can help clean up artifacts.