How To Make A Spectrum Retro-Gaming Canvas Print

Category: Articles Published: Monday, 10 December 2018 Written by James Durie

I was inspired recently by a post by GAME Telford of a canvas print of the Jet Set Willy code sheet.

I though it was a cool idea and wouldn't it be great to do something similar. Some time later I saw a post (now lost) about Spectrum cassette inlays.

Aha, I thought. Perfect! So here it is the canvas print I made from the casette inlay images from my favourite spectrum games.

How I made it

Step 1. I went to World of Spectrum and followed the links to Archive and cassette inlays.

Step 2. I went through each section and made a note of the url for an image of a game I liked in a text file.

(I was at work so saved them to do at home later. You don't have to do it this way you could just download the image at this point)

Step 3. I used curl to grab each image from the site.

Step 4. Start a new image in Inkscape. You want this to be a fairly big resolution for the page. I think I made mine A2 Landscape. Also set the background to white with alpha value 255.

Step 5. Import each image in to your inkscape image.

Step 6. Normalise the height of each image to 500 pixels. Each one will be a different width but being the same height will allow them to line up nicely.

Step 7. Switch on Snap to corners. This allows us to get a nice square edge and for each one to line up properly.

Step 8. This is the hard part. Start lining the images up in to rows snapping them together to get a nice overall look that you like and that has aligned edges.

This took me quite a few goes to get right. You may have to leave small gaps. e.g. There are small gaps either side of the Underwulde image between Manic Miner and Lunar Jetman

Step 9. Press Control-A to select all the images and Control-G to group them in to one.

Step 10. Position the image in the middle of you page and decide how you want the borders.

I decided not to use a border because I used snapfish to print which gives more control over the resulting picture position on the canvas.

Step 11. Export the image. Either select the whole picture and do export selection or do export page. Either way you want a big resolution so at least 180 dpi.

Step 12. Upload the final image to the canvas printing service of your choice.

Notes

Inkscape isn't essential to achieve any of this but it is free and fairly easy to use.

If you have some other software you prefer then go for it.

It doesn't have to be a canvas print. You could make a poster and frame it.

It doesn't have to be spectrum games. The Atari 2600 had really cool box art.

Troy (the other half of MapleScot) is now looking at making one with Intellivision box art.

I'm not going to post my final image as I don't own the copyright on any of the cassette inlay images used. I'm not trying to make money from this page I'm just trying to help people out if they want to do something similar.

With that said here is the list of games I used:

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/a/Airwolf_2.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/a/Alien8.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/a/AntAttack.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/a/AticAtac.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/b/BombJack.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/c/ChuckieEgg_2.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/c/Commando.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/d/DaleyThompsonsDecathlon.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/d/Dragontorc.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/e/Elite.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/e/EveryonesAWally.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/g/GhostNGoblins.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/g/Ghostbusters.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/h/HeadOverHeels.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/h/HobbitThe.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/j/JetSetWilly.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/j/Jetpac.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/k/KnightLore.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/l/LunarJetman.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/m/ManicMiner_2.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/m/MontyOnTheRun.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/p/Pyjamarama_2.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/r/RaidOverMoscow.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/r/RockyHorrorShowThe.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/s/SabreWulf.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/s/SkoolDaze.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/s/SpyHunter.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/t/TirNaNog.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/u/Underwurlde.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/u/Uridium.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/w/WinterGames48.jpg

http://worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/y/YieArKung-Fu.jpg