5 Correct answers
As @c.pfaffenbichler wrote, this is possible via actions, however, scripts would offer greater flexibility.
As an example of scripts:
Every tutorial on slicing suggests SAVE FOR WEB. Why?
By @PHughes3
The reason why is because when the word “slicing” is used, a web search thinks it’s about HTML slicing of web graphics, so it will lead you to the Slice tool. But even for web design, slices are kind of an outdated technique; today it’s better to use CSS layers. So if you’re doing web design today the Slice tool is probably not really what you want to use any more anyway, and for a print document it never was the right tool.
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This is not something I'd want to even attempt in Photoshop for the purpose of commercial printing. The fuss involved in taking into account things like bleed for each part would end up driving me nuts.
As @Conrad_C suggests, tiling in another application would be the best way forward, as the application will do the heavy lifting for you. If your commercial printer can work with PDFs, they may even prefer to tackle the tiling themselves.
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/acrobat/kb/print-posters-banners-acrobat-reader.html
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Every tutorial on slicing suggests SAVE FOR WEB. Why?
Because the word/concept »Slices« has a specific meaning in Photoshop, I suppose.
Please explain your intended process.
Do you just want to slice the image or is some overlap/bleed necessary etc.
It seems likely that you could automate the task with an Action, if that does not suffice then with a Script.
Every tutorial on slicing suggests SAVE FOR WEB. Why?
By @PHughes3
The reason why is because when the word “slicing” is used, a web search thinks it’s about HTML slicing of web graphics, so it will lead you to the Slice tool. But even for web design, slices are kind of an outdated technique; today it’s better to use CSS layers. So if you’re doing web design today the Slice tool is probably not really what you want to use any more anyway, and for a print document it never was the right tool.
For print production, the traditional term for this is not “slicing”, it’s “tiling”. Several Adobe applications have a Tile option in the Print dialog box. Photoshop doesn’t, but you’re not printing it yourself anyway so keep reading.
For your purposes of high-resolution print, you can use any technique that will divide the image into three equal parts. If you don’t use a script there are still some semi-automatic ways to do it. For example, if you were printing it yourself, you could combine setting the Rectangular Marquee selection tool to the Fixed Size that you need, and move it across the canvas for each section, each time selecting the Print Selected Area option in the Print dialog box.
But you’re not printing it yourself, you’re sending the images to a commercial printer. There are several ways to do this in Photoshop, but here’s one that doesn’t take much effort:
(Note: I edited this reply to replace this demo, because I found a way that’s simpler than the Guides + Crop tool method I showed here earlier.)
1. Make sure the document equals the paper size for each section. My sample image is exactly 3x the width of US Letter paper.
2. Drag the Frame tool to create a frame that’s the same size as the document.
3. Add the image. I dragged it from Bridge and dropped it into the frame, but you can also drag it from a folder window on the desktop.
4. Duplicate the document. For a triptych I made a total of three copies of the document.
5. In the Layers panel, make sure the frame layer content is selected (outlined), not the frame itself.
6. Use the Move tool to drag the image so it’s properly composed within that tile.
7. Repeat step 5 and 6 for all documents.
8. Save the documents, and send all three to the printing service.
This might be enough if you don’t do it very often. If you need to do it all the time, a script would be a lot less work, or you might be able to record an action that reduces the canvas width by 33% from a different anchor point in each of the three documents…I’ll have to try that sometime.
I thought about bleed, but my reply was long enough already. If we want to bring up bleed, then first we have to ask @PHughes3 what kind of print this is going to be…
If the three prints are intended to be assembled into a single larger seamless print, then you are correct, bleed must be taken into account to allow overlap without gaps. If that’s the goal, what I would have changed in my demo above is to enlarge the single-tile document dimensions and frame size by the bleed amount. Or, as you said, put it into other software that can tile with a bleed. But because PHughes3 is sending it out and not printing it themselves, a simple Tile feature in a Print dialog box won’t work; that software has to be able to save or export the tiles to the specific file format the print service provider wants.
However, it is also possible that all PHughes3 wants is a common and simple triptych, three different mounts hung together like the ones in the picture below. In that case a bleed might not be needed, just print and mount the sections. What I showed is perfectly suitable for that.
A third possibility is that they’re ordering a triptych mounted as wraps, with the prints going around the edges of their mounts like the ones in the picture below. In that case, we’re back to needing a bleed, but this time around all four sides of each of the three images. This bleed wouldn’t necessarily have to be done by the user if the printing service has an easy way of achieving the wrap by scaling up each image, or by mirroring or artificially extending the content that wraps around the edge.
So again, it all depends on what kind of mounting this is headed for.
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