How to display a series of satellite images?

July 4, 2015 1:45 PM

I want to display a set of 4 or 5 satellite images in a nice matted frame. Suggests for how to do this are welcome.

This site allows you to either download or print satellite images. The location I'm looking at has decent images up to 0.5 m.
You can have them print the images for you, starting at 11X14 or you can download them starting at 1500x1500 pixels.
I think that I'd like to do 4 photos in squares in a matted frame (like this sort of), but I have no idea where to start in terms of what size to download, how "zoomed in" I can get and then where I could send the files to be printed. Heck, I'll even take suggestions for where to buy a frame.

Is this something that I should pop into my local print shop and ask them to do for me or can I somehow do this myself?

posted by k8t to Home & Garden (2 answers total)

I don't have a ton of advice on selecting resolution and size, but you can print the images you downloaded to a flash drive at a print shop, and I doubt you can frame them there. While at the print shop, pick a paper that's smooth so it'll hold the details of the image, and not shiny, and you'll want something acid-free for longevity. A good-quality copier paper will actually fit the bill nicely here-- this ain't a resumé/CV you're printing here, so unless you have a particular expression in mind, let the picture be interesting, not the paper.

You'll need a frame shop for the frames, and most of them offer a DIY kind of thing-- if you don't know what you're doing, they'll help you with the first and you do the rest, with the qualification that you'll need their robot to cut the mats whether they're helping you or not.

Off-the-shelf frames, whether cheap or not, frames come in standard sizes, so this may be your main guide as to how to size your images. If this isn't an exact fit for a particular work, you use the mat to fudge the dimensions into a fit-- the hole in the mat doesn't have to be vertically centered, or, to put it another way, the top and bottom mat width don't have to be the same-- the eye won't revolt if the bottom border is thicker. They can most likely cut mats that have two holes, like a figure-8, so you can put two (related or not) images in the same frame, separated by a narrow strip of mat (or not narrow-- it's your project).
posted by Sunburnt at 6:13 PM on July 4, 2015

Just want to add that it may be cheaper to buy your own mat-cutter and DIY that part - custom mats can be outrageously expensive.

But before you do that, just look at what kind of pre-cut 2x2 mats you can find. It may be that you can find a pre-cut 2x2 mat for a few bucks, then find a frame that the mat fits into, and then figure out how big you want to print the images to look good in the mat. It's kinda working backwards, but if you want to minimize cost, you're better off sticking with some of the standard sizes for mats and frames.

If nothing else: just go do it, if only because it's sorta amazing how you can take almost anything and mat it and frame it and it will look 50 times better than you could have imagined.
posted by doctor tough love at 9:39 PM on July 4, 2015