Because I sell matted prints at art fairs, my natural inclination as a recovering engineer was to simply purchase pre-cut mats for 8x10, 11x14, and 16x20 frames. I quickly discovered each one was a different aspect ratio and that paper, matting, framing, and photography companies were apparently not aware of each other’s existence. Shooting 35mm I opted to standardize my crops to 3:2 with margin for the other ratios. Of course, artistically that was a often a bad idea. I’ve finally arrived at the decision to crop to the demands of the image, then cut my own mats. I’ve printed a copy of this and it lives with my Dahle paper and Logan mat cutters (both great investments) where it will always be handy. With this new found freedom, I am much happier with the results.
The only time the "industry" has been in sync was WAY back with sheet film and contact prints... Design challenges always come up. One of the ways to "solve" this I mentioned was to offset the mat in the premade sizes so that the bottom border is the only one that is "off" and the others are equal which tends to work well with a lot of things. I am never afraid of too much white space but usually too little.
I understand all the math but Lightroom pretty much takes care of everything once you have set up templates and you don't have to worry about cropping any part of an image (unless there is a good reason). A Rotatrim paper cutter can solve the problems of uneven white space margins. That being said, I do agree with this post!!!
This is a terrific article to review and study each time when making a print especially if its going to be framed - within a matt or without. I am fortunate to have an art store in Sweden that has multiple precut cuts matts for many different size frames so I can buy a matt for almost every ratio. Would be great if that was available here in US. My problem is cm sizes are just a tad to short or too long to apply for anything here so I still need to know the image size so this is a great article to print and keep. Thanks Paper Arts.
Because I sell matted prints at art fairs, my natural inclination as a recovering engineer was to simply purchase pre-cut mats for 8x10, 11x14, and 16x20 frames. I quickly discovered each one was a different aspect ratio and that paper, matting, framing, and photography companies were apparently not aware of each other’s existence. Shooting 35mm I opted to standardize my crops to 3:2 with margin for the other ratios. Of course, artistically that was a often a bad idea. I’ve finally arrived at the decision to crop to the demands of the image, then cut my own mats. I’ve printed a copy of this and it lives with my Dahle paper and Logan mat cutters (both great investments) where it will always be handy. With this new found freedom, I am much happier with the results.
The only time the "industry" has been in sync was WAY back with sheet film and contact prints... Design challenges always come up. One of the ways to "solve" this I mentioned was to offset the mat in the premade sizes so that the bottom border is the only one that is "off" and the others are equal which tends to work well with a lot of things. I am never afraid of too much white space but usually too little.
I understand all the math but Lightroom pretty much takes care of everything once you have set up templates and you don't have to worry about cropping any part of an image (unless there is a good reason). A Rotatrim paper cutter can solve the problems of uneven white space margins. That being said, I do agree with this post!!!
This is a terrific article to review and study each time when making a print especially if its going to be framed - within a matt or without. I am fortunate to have an art store in Sweden that has multiple precut cuts matts for many different size frames so I can buy a matt for almost every ratio. Would be great if that was available here in US. My problem is cm sizes are just a tad to short or too long to apply for anything here so I still need to know the image size so this is a great article to print and keep. Thanks Paper Arts.