Ratio, Print Size and Mat Size for Panoramas?

[Carl Hall]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been lucky enough that a local gallery has agreed to have around a dozen of my landscape photos displayed for a few weeks in June/July, and I’m trying to wrap my head around mats and mounts. Most of my photos are of a 3:2 ratio so I’m planning on displaying/selling a smallish size (a 12x8 print in a 16x12 mat) and a larger size (18x12 print in an A2 mat). I have a few photos which are panoramas and this is where I’m really struggling!

Is there a standard aspect ratio for panoramas? I’ve searched the web but haven’t had a great deal of success. I read somewhere that 12x5 was a good ratio, so that’s what a lot of my images are cropped to. DSCL can print to this, but I can’t seem to find anywhere that does mats or frames to suit. I could look into cropping my photos again to suit a different ratio, but I’m totally lost on what to go for! It’s a blimmin minefield of choices and I’m having difficulty matching ratio, print size, mat size and frame size together in a way that doesn’t cost a bomb and looks even(ish) around the edges. Is it best to go for a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio or is there another one that I'm missing?

Also, if anyone has any recommendations on where to buy mats and mounts then please speak up! I’m looking mainly at Picture Lizard currently as they seem to offer loads of different sizes, but I haven’t actually ordered anything so far so I’m still shopping around for other places.

This is the first time I've printed and mounted any of my photos, so as you can imagine I'm feeling a litle out of my depth lol. If anyone has any advice on this then I’d be really grateful.

Thanks a lot,

Carl

 

[Canvases and Prints]

Hi Carl,

Try keeping it natural. Most of the panoramas I print simply go by the longest side. So if your longest side was to be 12" and your small side turned out to be 5.2" then you would get a mount cut to fit this size.

Hope that helps?

Cheers

Tam

 

[StewartR]

Is there a standard aspect ratio for panoramas?

No.

What I'd do is standardise my panoramas to a constant width and then the vertical dimensions are what they are. I'd choose a mount size to accommodate the largest one and fit them all into the same size mount with differing border widths at the bottom.

For example, suppose you standardise on 24" and suppose your panoramas come out between 8" and 12 high". Then I'd trim all the mounts to something like 28"x16", and I'd mount all the images so that the top and side borders are the same (2"), with just the bottom border varying (from 2" to 6").

One thing to think about, however, is how big to print them. Your other 18"x12" prints are 216 sq inches. If you want the same impact you'd want your panoramas to have a similar area. With an aspect ratio of 2:1 that means about 21"wide; at 12:5 it means 23" wide; at 3:1 it means 25" wide. So maybe 24" would be a good standard. Or if your panoramas have a more extreme aspect ratio, then they'd need to be wider still.

 

[Carl Hall]

Ahh I see, so rather than cropping your image to a ration that can be put into a standard mount, you just get custom mounts made? Sounds fairly straight forward! To make things simpler I ended up re-cropping most of my panoramas from 15x8 to 2x1 which are pretty similar anyway. Then I can just buy a wad of custom mounts that are all the same size and I know they'll all fit in!

Thanks both for your help

 

[Nod]

On a holiday last year, I took loads of panoramas using the automatic facility on the cameras I took and ended up with several in 3 formats, 120°, 180 and 360. When I had some printed at 24" wide, I decided that the 120 and 180 ones were worth framing so had a pair of frames made locally to suit the dimensions of the prints. The actual shots get swapped from time to time as and when I feel the urge for change!