A collage montage...

January 29, 2006 9:12 PM

I am looking to order prints of various album covers for a collage to go on an empty wall. Advice is needed on some of the logistics.

Firstly, I would like to know where I could acquire printing-quality album art. The iTMS Album Art finder usually returns 600x600 artwork in decent quality. Would this be sufficient quality to get, say a 6"x6" print? Top notch quality isn't a necessity; passable quality will suffice, if it will look good from 3 or 4 feet away.

Secondly, I would like to know the most economical way to get these printed. I have a cheap printer that probably wouldn't suffice for this project, so I probably will end up getting them printed somewhere else. I would probably prefer matted to glossy, but cost will supercede any preferences there. I've checked a few online photo printing sites, but have experience with only walmart.com's services (yeah, it's convienient) and snapfish, which I wasn't especially fond of. Any other recommendations would be much appreciated!

posted by charmston to grab bag (7 comments total)

Sort of an odd answer to the question, an alternative, really.

I did a similar project -- hanging album covers on the wall. I found a very cheap alternative to printing them yourself: Go to thrift stores, Salvation Army, etc, and used record stores and just buy the actual record albums. I found lots of really amazing ones for about $1.00 each.

Most of them were albums that I already had, so I just hung the album covers on the wall. Later, in a fit of artistic fury and disregard for the sanctity of vinyl, I got picture frames the size of the records, ditched the actual vinyl and cut the front covers out of the best ones to frame. It looks great.
posted by JekPorkins at 9:17 PM on January 29, 2006

Alternately, it's quite easy to place CD cases in a wall using a simple framework of dowels.
posted by orthogonality at 9:51 PM on January 29, 2006

For all my digital photo processing, I use Winkflash. They have the cheapest rates I've ever seen. Posters are about 10 dollars for a good sized print. As for making the collage digitally, Picasa does this on the PC side, but I don't know about anything for mac (although I'd like to find out).
posted by rossination at 10:19 PM on January 29, 2006

Lifehacker to the rescue.
posted by rossination at 10:21 PM on January 29, 2006

To clarify: I'd like to print solely 6"x6" album covers...seperately, and not as a poster. Winkflash looks great, though! Keep the suggestions rolling.
posted by charmston at 10:40 PM on January 29, 2006

Oh, no, crap. I'm sorry for the cluelessness in my answer.
posted by rossination at 11:43 PM on January 29, 2006

To followup on the JekPorkins derail, I used these but saved the vinyl ;-)
posted by grateful at 10:44 AM on January 30, 2006