From: Clay (wcharmon@wt.net)
Date: 06/28/03-10:37:42 AM Z
Carl:
I was exaggerating, of course. For common formats, it may look fine. I
too leave a little more mat border on the bottom for framing purposes,
but I have seen some matting jobs that adhere strictly to "the
formula", and odd sized formats look REALLY strange. Try using the
formula for a 7x17 on a 15x25 mat board for instance! It works fine
with an image that is about a 5x7 aspect ratio. More square or more
skinny images will look increasingly bizarre if one adheres strictly to
the formula. Another factor is the difference in aspect ratio between
the image and the mat. The more different they are, the more likely
that strict adherence to the formula will give a strange result.
Sounds like we're in violent agreement about how to frame things,
however. I think the eyeball method is the way to go.
Clay
On Saturday, June 28, 2003, at 11:22 AM, Carl Weese wrote:
>
>> Subject: Re: Matting and framing Theory
>>
>> I noticed a few people
>> who rigorously observed the old salon rule of matting the print in the
>> 'optical center' of the board. I find that this looks ridiculous for
>> most prints, however.
>
>
> Clay,
>
> Not having heard of this before I looked it up, and it's just a
> formula for
> an offset of the print to leave more mat at the bottom than at the
> top, with
> the offset a ratio of print and mat size. It seems overly complicated,
> but I
> don't know why the results would look ridiculous.
>
> I'm happy with a precisely centered mat window when the prints are
> shown in
> a portfolio, held by hand. For some reason though, a centered window
> *looks*
> off-center (low) when framed on the wall. So for prints that will be
> framed,
> I routinely leave a little more mat at the bottom than the top,
> without the
> elaborate ritual for Optical Center Matting, but with the result that
> the
> image seems centered, or at least comfortable. For a 7.5x9.5 window in
> a
> 16x20 board I leave half an inch more at the bottom. For 11x19 in
> 20x28 I
> might up it to three-quarters. The mat goes in a dark brown wood frame
> with
> a narrow front face.
>
> I've sometimes seen prints mounted with *much* more white below than
> above,
> and that does look ridiculous to my eye.
>
> ---Carl
>
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