Printing Minor Images?

[Palanan]

Is there any way to embed a minor image in a solid surface?

I’m thinking Daily Prophet-style moving photos in a printed broadsheet. Is there some way to do this? Preferably cost-effective?

[Duke of Urrel]

I think you need to invent a new spell that does this. I recommend the Glamer subschool, because you are changing the appearance of a solid object, not adding an illusion to an empty space, as spells of the Figment subschool do.

[Silva Stormrage]

RAW Not that I know of.

However I could see this being a good use of wonderous architecture from Stronghold Builders guide which lets you create magic items cheaper if they are large and can't be moved. Make a magic printing press using custom magic item guidelines should be reasonable.

Minor Image can't make actual speech so it's not quite as good as you need to replicate HP newspapers as I believe those can speak. Thankfully Gnome Illusionists get Major image at 2nd level so Artificers can use Major Image instead at the same price.

So make a large magic printing press that can apply the illusions to pieces of paper (Maybe make the illusions only last a week) like you want. The price for that should be pretty cheap (2k (At Will)* 2 (Spell level)* 3 (Caster Level) Divided by 4 (Wonderous Architecture Reduction for being a huge non movable item). Means the base is ~3k. The DM can increase or decrease that as appropriate for the modifications of Duration Increase (Illusion lasts for ~1 week instead of concentration) and reduction in area (Can only scribe it to a paper instead of a standard 7 10ft cube area) and scope increase (By default it can only create 1/round which uh isn't quite enough for a large circulation newspaper. Maybe ignore the reduction in area and say it can produce 7 10ft cubes of newspapers per use if you feed it the paper).

Rough guidelines but that should be enough to work from and seems like a reasonable item a large paper could have in a magical city.

[noob]

Is there any way to embed a minor image in a solid surface?

I’m thinking Daily Prophet-style moving photos in a printed broadsheet. Is there some way to do this? Preferably cost-effective?

Secret page might or might not be able to do that due to how ridiculously open ended it is (the room for interpretation is basically infinite).
Illusory script could be used to implant the suggestion: "The picture is animated, believe it"

[Duke of Urrel]

RAW Not that I know of.

However I could see this being a good use of wonderous architecture from Stronghold Builders guide which lets you create magic items cheaper if they are large and can't be moved. Make a magic printing press using custom magic item guidelines should be reasonable.

I like this idea, Silva Stormrage. And there is a very nice, low-level spell that you can use as a pre-requisite for creating a magical printing press: the Amanuensis spell, a zero-level cantrip.

If we're assuming that this world has the equivalent of both newspapers and photography, I recommend inventing a new variant of the Prying Eyes spell called the Paparazzi spell. It would work like the Prying Eyes spell, but instead of replaying spy videos for the spellcaster alone, the Paparazzi spell would create framed photos of all spied-upon creatures, and each photo would replay a creature's actions that were "caught on camera." These photos could then be fed to the magic printing press, and voilà: instant Daily Prophet.