Matting consists of mounting a photograph to a mat board into which an opening the size of the photograph has been cut. The photograph is attached to the back of the mat with framing or archival tape.

Matting your photographs may be more important than you think especially if you want to sell your photographs either framed or unframed.

Matting a photograph provides three main benefits:

First, it insures that the photograph will not touch the glass once it is framed - the mat board acts as a spacer between the photograph and the glass.

Second, once the photograph is framed and displayed matting helps separate the photograph from its surroundings. It gives it its own unique space and presence.

Third, but not last, matting a photograph makes it more sellable. A matted photograph is a finished product ready to frame, since all your customer has to do is find a frame for it. If you sell your photographs matted your customers will not have to pay custom matting, which is expensive, and if you use standard mat sizes (which I recommend) they will not have to get custom framing which is even more expensive.

Popular standard frame sizes include 8x10, 11x14, 16x20, 20x30, etc. Offering your photographs matted in a standard frame size means that your customers can purchase a ready-made frame and frame the photograph themselves. This is an important selling point: to your customer it means that the cost of framing the photograph will be minimized.