The tutorial is a complement to the essay I did previously on mounting photos.
A Window Mat is the piece of mat board used over the mounting board. Some people refer to them as "overlay mats". There is a window cut to allow the photograph to be seen. This window is usually cut with a beveled edge of about 45 degrees. The amount of bevel is not important, as long as it is consistent.
Window mats are used to improve the appearance and depth of a photograph. They can also be used to hide the mounts that hold the photograph when photo corners, hinges, or flanges are used in mounting. If the photograph is framed with a glass cover, then a mat must be used to prevent the photograph from touching the inside surface of the glass.
Like most anything in life, there are easy and there are hard ways to accomplish the same task. Cutting a mat by hand is the same thing. In this article my intent is to show that mat cutting is not difficult or expensive.
In the previous tutorial on mounting, I mentioned using a mount that was larger than the intended finished size. In this way, the window mat could be cut to the finished size, then the mount trimmed to fit. This is the easy way. Another way to do it is the reverse. If your mount is already cut to the finished size, make the window mat a little larger than required. Then trim the mat to fit. If both the mount and the window mat are exact size, it makes it very hard to position the window precisely over the print. I will get into this a little deeper as we go through this tutorial.
Let's Get Started
List of materials: