Posters to the People

October 7, 2013 1:02 PM

Excellent collection of free, downloadable posters that you can print at home.

Are you looking for low-budget and stylish decor?
These vintage posters can be downloaded in a high-res ZIP format and printed. Most of them are advertising from years gone by.
posted by Too-Ticky (31 comments total)

Where would you print these? Staples boasts poster printing, would that suffice?
posted by shothotbot at 1:04 PM on October 7, 2013

Well, I print them at home (I have a colour laser). But yes, Staples could most likely do it.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:14 PM on October 7, 2013

Awesome, thanks for this.
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:17 PM on October 7, 2013

These are cool! My daughter and I went out west this summer and went to Yellowstone, Zion, and Grand Canyon National Parks (among other places) and I can print her posters for all 3!
posted by TedW at 1:17 PM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Google Giclée printing if you want something really nice - you can get an A1 poster done for about $50 online. Any printer worth their salt can look at the file and tell you the largest size the poster can stand to be before it starts looking too pixelated.

If you want something to stick up on the wall of your dorm with some bluetac, Staples poster printing will do fine.
posted by cilantro at 1:20 PM on October 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

Also relevant: Vintage Printable. They have some great content, although the interface is kind of awkward. (It used to be way, waaay worse.)
posted by escape from the potato planet at 1:21 PM on October 7, 2013 [7 favorites]

SELF DECAPITATION
posted by escape from the potato planet at 1:22 PM on October 7, 2013 [5 favorites]

Thanks for this! My husband's a history teacher and loves to put up old posters. This will likely save me some money.
posted by kimberussell at 1:24 PM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh great, I already have a weakness for prints and this will just make it worse. It's totally cool to have a house with no more available wall space, right?
posted by Kitteh at 1:27 PM on October 7, 2013

This is very cool. Thanks for posting!
posted by Rock Steady at 1:33 PM on October 7, 2013

Psst, Kitteh, . . . . . ceilings




(ceiling cat... yeah, I know, but.)
posted by mightshould at 1:57 PM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

I've downloaded a few to check the resolution and they'll print on 8.5 x 11 at 300 dpi, so "poster-size" might be a stretch. Just an FYI. Personally, I plan to use the BOAC Hong Kong ad for a notebook cover.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 2:02 PM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

As a wide format operator, you'd be surprised at the resolution you can get away with. Conventional wisdom is no less than 150 DPI at the size you want to print, but for a lot of things you can push them to about 50 DPI and they will look fine (especially if you consider the viewing distance).
posted by robtf3 at 2:05 PM on October 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

Don't get too excited about printing them, a random sampling of 2 images has one at 1000 x 2000 px and another was 300x400 px. The larger is suitable for posters of up to 5"x10", otherwise known as a post card. A lot of these images are available at much higher resolution at the Library of Congress website.
posted by doctor_negative at 2:11 PM on October 7, 2013 [16 favorites]

Cocaine Fiends! Great movie.

Not.
posted by bdz at 2:17 PM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

I'm surprised to see Some Like it Hot there. Wouldn't it have to be in the public domain? Or are posters different? (Or is it just not legal, always an option.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:21 PM on October 7, 2013

Germany - Land of Music
posted by yoHighness at 2:31 PM on October 7, 2013

Also blow posters up to any size with Rasterbator.
posted by yoHighness at 2:31 PM on October 7, 2013 [3 favorites]

This needs a filter by size option.
posted by chillmost at 2:57 PM on October 7, 2013

I'm surprised to see Some Like it Hot there. Wouldn't it have to be in the public domain?

I was surprised at some of them as well, but apparently the site is not concerned:

While some of the posters on this site are in the public domain, many others are not. We do not guarantee that all the vintage artworks are in the public domain. If you are using these artworks for commercial purposes, please do your own research to determine the rights associated with each piece. FreeVintagePosters.com is for educational, research, and entertainment purposes only.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:11 PM on October 7, 2013

The PSAs are striking, especially those I can imagine seeing today. The reasons may have changed, but one from 96 years ago, during WWI, hits a retrospectively ominous tone: buy food with thought, buy local, eat less meat.
posted by mayurasana at 3:19 PM on October 7, 2013 [2 favorites]

While some of the posters on this site are in the public domain, many others are not. We do not guarantee that all the vintage artworks are in the public domain. If you are using these artworks for commercial purposes, please do your own research to determine the rights associated with each piece. FreeVintagePosters.com is for educational, research, and entertainment purposes only.

Not to derail, but, 3 questions:
Aren't they using the works for commercial purposes (see: all of the ads on the site)?
Have they done their own research to determine the rights associated with each piece?
Self-decapitation — how the hell does that work?
posted by mean square error at 3:23 PM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

http://www.freevintageposters.com/p/privacy.html

" All posters are readily available on the internet throughout various other websites. Images uploaded are believed to be posted within our rights according to the U.S. Copyright Fair Use Act (title 17, U.S. Code.) We do not own the copyright to any of the artworks posted on this site. All poster copyrights belong to their respective owners."

Well that's not how I understand *Fair Use* to work. At least they know what it means to provide no citations.
This seems to be a pretty sleazy venture to me.
posted by peacay at 4:10 PM on October 7, 2013 [4 favorites]

Love them - thank you!
posted by michellenoel at 4:25 PM on October 7, 2013

The one I tried, "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", is 2601x4001.
posted by oluckyman at 5:42 PM on October 7, 2013

"Attack of the 50 Foot Woman", is 2601x4001.

Or 6.66833 ppi.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:47 PM on October 7, 2013 [5 favorites]

PPI is not the same as DPI.
posted by robtf3 at 6:06 PM on October 7, 2013

Any printer worth their salt can look at the file and tell you the largest size the poster can stand to be before it starts looking too pixelated.

Yeah, these files were disappointingly low rez. I looked at the "self decapitation" file which was the highest rez as any of the files I looked at. The Iris inkjet has a native rez of 300ppi, this file would print optimally at about 6.5x10in and that's the full image which has lots of stuff outside the border that needs to be cropped. You could drop it to half rez, print it at 150ppi at about 13x20 and it would look blurry and crappy. Some people say you can get away with 150ppi files on modern inkjets. But I can see the decrease in quality a mile off. Many people wouldn't notice it unless you put a 300dpi version right next to it. But then it would be obvious to anyone.

And I am not too thrilled about the quality of these files even at native rez. The images had high noise and were not very sharp.

You get what you pay for. These files are free.
posted by charlie don't surf at 6:44 PM on October 7, 2013 [1 favorite]

PPI is not the same as DPI.

Thank you for the correction. God only knows what might have happened otherwise!
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:11 PM on October 7, 2013

Otherwise someone might have tragically missed the joke.
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:35 AM on October 8, 2013 [3 favorites]

You can always do an image search on Google Images or TinEye to find other sources of these images, possibly in higher resolution than available here.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:28 PM on October 8, 2013