Cosplay Character Scaling

A Guide on Printing Your Character or Prop to Scale Using Photoshop CC

By Galaxy Wolf Cosplay (aka WolfOnAcid)
https://www.facebook.com/galaxywolfcosplay
https://www.instagram.com/wolfonacid

I'm sure a similar method would work in free programs such as Inkscape - worth a try!

1. Firstly, open an A4 sized document in Photoshop.

2. Open the image of your character or prop in Photoshop then copy over to the A4
document. In my case, I opened the PSD included in my files purchased from Zach Fisher
and copied the line art layer only. I try to fill out as much of the page as I can.

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3. Now you want to set your measurement scale. Go to Image > Analysis > Set
Measurement Scale > Custom...

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Now you need to measure the length of the page and covert the pixels to inches, so take the
provided ruler tool and measure the entire page from top to bottom. Once you've done this,
set the Logical Length to the page length in inches. An A4 page measure 11.69 inches in
length. Once you've done this, click OK.

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4. Now that you have set your measurement scale, you want to measure the height of your
character (or length of your prop). You can find the Ruler tool hidden with the eyedropper
tool.

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Once you've made your measurement, you will see it in inches in the top left (where I have
circled in red). This is in relation to the measurement scale you set earlier. Take note of this
measurement as we will need it shortly.

5. Save your file as a PDF.

6. If you are printing out a character, divide your height (in inches) by the measurement you
got. In my case, the bow measures 48.94 inches in length so;

48.94 / 10.78 = 4.5

This means I need to print my bow out at 450%. I will get to this in a second.

7. Need to know how to measure a prop for your height? Use a program such as Nifegun (a
free web based program) or ImageJ (a free program that you download). In this example, I
will use Nifegun. Upload a photo of your character and prop, then measure your character
using the baseline. Set the length(inches) to your height. You will then want to click "add
line" then measure the length of your prop. This will measure it in inches relative to your
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height (which is how I got the measurement above!). You can also use this to measure
anything else you need, such as armor pieces or details!

8. Finally it's time to print! Remember that PDF document we created earlier? Open that
using Acrobat Reader. Then hit the print button.

9. Set your print settings as follows:

- Under Page Sizing and Handling, set to Poster.

- In the Tile Scale section, type in the percentage we got earlier. In my case, it was 450%.
- Ensure Cut Marks and Labels are ticked, this will make your life way easier when it comes
to taping it all together (in case you jumble up all the pages during printing!)

- Now hit PRINT! Hooray!

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10. Time to tape all your pages together. Have fun and good luck with your build! :)

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<3 Maddy aka Galaxy Wolf Cosplay
© 2018