How Can I Check My Wall Mural Before Printing?

You've prepared your image, entered the wall size, cropped the artwork and created the individual wallpaper panels.

Everything looks good.

But before sending those panels to the printer, there's one more useful question to ask:

How do I know the finished panels are going to work together?

An image can look perfectly good when viewed as one complete picture. But a wall mural isn't necessarily printed as one enormous image. It is usually divided into separate panels, or drops, which are installed next to each other on the wall.

That makes checking the actual finished panel files an important final step.

Mural Station calls this Pre-Flight Print Proofing.

It simply means checking the mural panels before sending them for printing.

Why check the panels if I've already checked the image?

Because the original image and the finished mural panels are not quite the same thing.

By this stage, your artwork may have been cropped, enlarged and divided into separate drops. Bleed or overlap may have been added, and the finished files have been prepared at the required physical size.

Those finished panel files are what eventually matter to the printer.

Mural Station's Pre-Flight tools grew out of a real production problem.

During testing, panels that seemed fine earlier in the process could reveal problems when the finished drops were examined together. Checking them before sending them onwards made it possible to spot possible issues with pattern matching, colour and texture earlier.

1. Check where two mural panels join

One of the most important places to inspect is the seam between two neighbouring drops.

Mural Station's Interactive Seam Tester lets you load two neighbouring panels and examine their joining edges together.

For example, you can inspect Drop 1 beside Drop 2, then Drop 2 beside Drop 3, and continue through the mural.

This gives you a much closer look at whether patterns, lines, textures and other details continue naturally from one panel to the next.

You can inspect the panels as a butt joint, where the two edges meet, or examine the overlapping area when overlap has been included.

Small positioning controls allow you to inspect the join closely rather than relying on a reduced view of the complete mural.

It's a bit like checking two strips of wallpaper together before they ever reach the wall.

2. Look closely at the actual image detail

A complete mural displayed on a computer screen has to be reduced dramatically just to fit on the screen.

That can make it difficult to judge fine detail.

The 100% Pixel Loupe lets you inspect sections of the finished panel more closely.

This can help you look for areas that appear soft, pixelated or lacking in detail before the files are sent onwards.

You don't have to inspect every single pixel of an enormous mural.

The purpose is simply to give you a closer look at important areas when you want one.

3. Print a small section at actual size

Sometimes looking at a screen isn't enough.

Mural Station can create a 1:1 printable A4 test swatch from part of the mural.

Rather than printing the whole mural, you can select a small area and print that section on an ordinary A4 printer at actual size.

This gives you a physical sample that can help you judge things such as detail and texture away from the computer screen.

The test page includes a 10 cm calibration ruler.

After printing, measure that ruler with a real ruler. If it measures exactly 10 cm, you know the printer has produced the test at the intended scale.

If it doesn't, check that your printer hasn't automatically used settings such as Fit to Page or scaling.

A small home or office printer is obviously not the same as a commercial large-format mural printer, so this test shouldn't be treated as a guarantee of the final printed colour or output.

It's simply another useful way to inspect the artwork before committing to the full mural.

4. Review the production settings

The final part is Mural Station's Pre-Flight Quality Check.

This automatically checks several important properties of the files Mural Station has produced.

It checks that:

• the mural has been divided into the expected number of drops and their total width corresponds with the mural dimensions;
• the selected overlap has been included where required;
• the selected perimeter bleed has been added;
• the calculated resolution of the finished panels has been checked;
• the generated files use the expected colour profile; and
• the panels have been created in the expected image file format.

For more details on resolution figures and DPI, see our Mural Tip: What Image Resolution Do I Need for a Wall Mural?

When these items show CHECKED, it means Mural Station has checked those properties in its own output files.

It does not mean that Mural Station is certifying or guaranteeing the final result from a third-party printer.

Can Pre-Flight guarantee that my mural will print perfectly?

No software can control every part of what happens after a file leaves it.

The final result can also be affected by the printer, inks, material, colour management, printer settings and the installation itself.

That's why Mural Station's Pre-Flight system is designed as a set of checks, not a guarantee.

Its purpose is to help you catch potential problems while you can still do something about them.

• If something doesn't look right at the seam, you can investigate it.
• If an important area looks poor when inspected closely, you can reconsider it.
• If your A4 calibration ruler doesn't measure correctly, you can fix the print settings.
• And if one of the production checks isn't as expected, you can look at it before sending the files onwards.

Do I need to understand professional print proofing?

No.

You don't need to become a print technician just to perform some sensible checks before sending a mural for printing.

Think of Pre-Flight as a final look around before the files leave your hands.

• Check the joins.
• Look closely at important details.
• Print a small actual-size sample if you want a physical reference.
• Review the production checks.

Then, when you're satisfied, you can send the mural panels to your printer knowing you've had an opportunity to inspect the things that are within your control.