Six steps. About forty minutes the first time, ten after that. Read it once before you upload. Come back to it when the queue pushes something back.
Scan from the printed original.
A poster photographed on a wall is a memory, not a record. We only accept flatbed scans or high-resolution studio photography of the physical printed artifact — never screenshots, never phone snaps of prints on walls, never promo JPEGs lifted from a streaming service.
JPEG or PNG. Minimum long edge 1800 px.
Deliver a lossless or minimally-compressed export. We downsample to produce every thumbnail size on our end — what you upload is what our archivists see. If your file is below our minimum, the queue will reject it automatically; no manual review.
| Format | JPEG (q92+) or PNG-24 |
|---|---|
| Min. long edge | 1800 px |
| Max. filesize | 45 MB |
| Color profile | sRGB, embedded |
| Bit depth | 8-bit (16-bit PNG welcome) |
Trim the scan bed. Don't paint.
Crop tight to the printed edge — we accept a 2–4 px margin of paper-white if the poster has a bleed. Remove dust and scanner hairs with the healing brush. Do not repaint creases, do not reconstruct missing corners, do not rebuild text. Archival fidelity means preserving damage.
Every field matters.
The metadata form is why people can find this poster in ten years. Title, year, and country are required. Printer, designer, and illustrator fields are where our archive earns its reputation — fill them if you know, leave them empty if you don't. Never guess.
| Title | As printed on the poster, not IMDB |
|---|---|
| Year | Print year, not film release year |
| Country | Country of print, not of production |
| Size | Exact trim in mm × mm if known |
| Designer / Illustrator | Named credits only, else blank |
| Printer | From the small print at the bottom |
Attest that you own the scan.
You don't need to own copyright on the poster — we curate under archival fair-use — but you do need to own the scan itself. No re-uploads from other archives, no scraped stock-photo libraries. If we detect a duplicate from another source, the upload is removed and your uploader score takes a hit.
Queue enters review within 48h.
Once submitted, a community curator looks at your upload within 48 hours on average (faster for high-reputation uploaders). You'll receive a queue position and an ETA. If approved, the poster goes live; if rejected, you get a specific reason and can resubmit with corrections.
If your scan meets the bar above, the queue will love you. If you’re not sure — open the contact form and ask a curator first.