From: Jeff Buckels (jeffbuck@swcp.com)
Date: 06/28/03-10:40:28 AM Z
Carl, Clay, et al.: I do what Carl speaks of here, i.e., leave a little
more on the bottom but I just eye-ball it, don't know the referenced
formula. Here's a twist I'm coming up on (if I ever get around to some
much-deferred matting projects): What about round images? I've taken
round prints -- about 8" in diameter -- of mine (clean, dark-rimmed
circles, i.e., masked) and just cut some interleaving up to look at
matting possibilities. I'd kind of settled on exactly centering the
circle in a square frame -- either 11" or 14". At about that time I saw
some circle images at a friend's (pt/pd printer's) house, and he had the
circle real distinctly high in the square. I thought it looked pretty
good, I guess. LOTS of extra weight beneath. -jb
-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Weese [mailto:cweese@earthlink.net]
Sent: Saturday, June 28, 2003 10:23 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca
Subject: Re: Matting and framing Theory
> 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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