Posters have been a popular way of relating information about topics as diverse as recent movies or fundraising drives. In fact, older posters have become popular collectors’ items. They are also prized by library and university archives as cultural documents. One problem with older posters is that they are often damaged by age or wear. This makes it difficult to display an older poster without risking further damage. One solution to this problem is to create a copy of the poster that you can display in its place, keeping the original safely stored away.

Things You Will Need

  • Protective container

  • Paint software program

Using a Copying Service

Place your poster in a container to transport it. Posters that are not too fragile can be rolled and placed in a tube. Otherwise, place the poster in a stiff flat carrier.

Take your poster to a local business that has a large-scale digital copier capable of getting the entire poster in one sweep. Have the poster scanned into the business's computer. Alternatively, you could ship the poster to a company that provides this service, but you are taking greater chances with the original.

Have the poster printed on a quality non-acid poster paper. Get it trimmed to the same dimensions as the original or with extra border, so that the entire poster can be displayed behind a frame.

Making the Copy Yourself

Place the poster carefully onto your computer's scanner surface. Position it so that the corner is against the edge of the copying surface.

Use your scanner software to scan the image into your computer. Use the cropping tools that the scanner comes with to trim the section you scan. Save this image as a high resolution JPEG named A1.

Move the poster on the scanner and repeat the scan, naming it A2. Continue this process to create a series of images made up of lettered rows and numbered columns.

Open Paint. Select “Image” in the menu and click “Attributes.” In the dialog box, make the overall size the same as the oversize of the poster.

Open the A1 image in Windows Live Photo Gallery. Right-click on it, and copy it. Go back to Paint and click “Edit” and then “Paste.” Position the image in the corner of the image where it should be. Repeat this to bring in all the sections. Save your work as a JPEG.

Print or get a print made of the poster from this JPEG file.