Hard to be Square

[cyrus]

What's the best approach to mounting and then storing square prints in portfolio boxes?

I want to create a portfolio of square prints, and have concluded that the best thing to do is to drymount them to keep them flat and protected from damage with at least 1 in border between the print and the mat edge (is right or do you have other suggestions?)

Some people mount square prints on rectangular mats, positioning the print on the mat vertically closer to the top, in such a way as to leave more white space on the bottom of the mat. This looks OK, and means that I can buy pre-cut rectangular mats to use, and these rectangular mats can be stored in rectangular archival storage or portfolio boxes, which makes life easier since all of the rectangular stuff can be bought easily.

But what if I wanted to use square mats. I am resigned to cutting my own mats but do they make square portfolio boxes?

[chris jordan]

You can cut a rectangular portfolio box to fit. It won't be pretty but it will fit perfectly. Also, if you make square mats, leave an extra 1/2" on the bottom for visual weight. If you make the borders all equal, it looks unbalanced. With an extra 1/2" on bottom, it looks nicely balanced.

[Ralph Barker]

Just make a rectangular tube out of cardboard to fill in the empty space in the portfolio box. You can then cover it with something to make it more presentable, if you wish.

[Capocheny]

Check with a supplier like Light Impressions... you'd probably be surprised at what is available if you did a bit of checking!

Cheers

[robc]

just to make life easy I use a square mount for square images, but I crop the image by and extra cm or two so that it is just off square and leaves a bigger space at the bottom. This means you can use ready made square frames if required and measuring and cutting mounts is easier because the width is the same all round.

see here for example.

you need to click on the image or "view in frame" to see it in a frame. The image is just off square but everything else is square.

note that if you are using a screen res which does not have a ratio of 4:3 then it won't look square. i.e. 1280x1024 is not 4:3 but 1024x768 is.

[cyrus]

Thanks - I get the idea of matting square prints to be bottom-heavy, but then I still have to find a portfolio box of some sort to store them in. What do you use?

And how about the writing on the bottom portion of your matting - is that placed there by Photoshop for the web site image, or is it printed on the actual mat itself? If so, how?

Beautifu shots btw
Cheers!