Thursday, September 9, 2010

A Handy Tool for Photographers

If you're going to display your work, it looks better matted.

If you hope to sell your work it HAS to be matted.

Doing that well requires tools. In addition to a good mat cutter, I found a software tool to make planning the cuts much simpler.

It's a free-ware program called MatWorks written by photographer Giorgio Trucco.


MatWorks has a simple graphical interface. You enter values (in inches) for the Mat size and choose from Portrait, Landscape and Square layouts. Enter values for Print Size and layout and Image Size and layout. Choose your matting style from Centered, Bottom Weighted or Double Bottom Weighted - single or double mats - and enter the dimension (decimal fractions of an inch) that you want the mat to overlap the image and the top mat to reveal the bottom mat.

Click the button to calculate and it shows an image of what the finished mat will look like along with detailed cutting measurements for the back of the mat.

Simple to use, precise and best of all FREE!
While you're at it take a look at some beautiful landscape and nature photography on Giorgio Trucco's web site:

http://www.gt-photography.com/portfolios.html

2 comments:

Kathleen C Photography said...

Thanks for the info and link. I need all the help that I can get.

Unknown said...

I actually donated money to him since I found the software useful. Looks like his website is no longer working?