Jan 23, 2012

Scaling Patterns with Photoshop & Adobe Acrobat Pro

I opened up my copy of Jean Hunnisett's Period Costume for Stage & Screen 1800-1909 today planning to scale up some Regency dress sleeves.
I am already aware the patterns are an approximate size 12, my size, so I didn't expect to have to change much.
My dilemma was that I didn't want to spend much time blowing it up, and I could not photocopy the book or enlarge it on a photocopier. All I had to hand was my iPhone, an A4 printer, Photoshop and Adobe Acrobat Pro.
What I worked out was not rocket science, but it was fast, simple and achievable in less than 30 minutes.

  1. I took a photo of the pattern piece I was planning to scale up.
  2. Uploaded the photo to my computer.
  3. Opened the picture in Photoshop.
  4. Cropped the picture tightly.
  5. Counted how many squares across it was - the scale is one square = one inch.
  6. Opened up image size and made sure the width measurement of the image matched what I wanted to scale it to.
  7. Saved the image as a .jpg.
  8. The I opened up Adobe Acrobat Pro - I use Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro.
  9. I opened the jpg in Adobe Acrobat Pro [file - open - show all files - file name]
  10. Then I printed it all out, single sided, black & white: file - print - tile all pages - tile scale 100% - overlap 0.005 in - + cut marks.
Then I trimmed the pages and stuck them together with tape. Now I get to play with fabric!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

That's a great way to scale up. I use the manual method of creating an overhead transparency on mu OHP and expanding to the required scale and then drawing it onto the pattern paper pinned to my quilt design board.

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