Mounting, Trimming & Laminating

When it comes to scrap booking, displays, and other photo exhibition efforts, knowledge of photograph mounting will come in quite handy. When using the correct photograph mounting techniques, your job will be much simpler, and your display will be much more attractive.

Simple photo mounting techniques can be discovered in many places, including magazines on the subject, tips online, and even in your local hobby shop from a knowledgeable employee. You can watch many of the home improvement shows on television or scrap booking specials and learn a lot about the process, as well as about laminating and trimming photos to fit within a collage or certain work of art. One of the best sources for creating a nice display without affecting the integrity of your pictures is a set of photo mounting corners. Small pockets that will hold just the very corner of a photograph, these can be mounted to almost any surface since the back is usually sticky. This means that you can use them for scrapbooks, wall hangings, photo albums, and on a photo mounting board.

Some photo mounting boards are already adhesive, meaning that you can simply stick your photos onto the surface and expect them to stay. The downside to this option is simply that it is only recommended for use should you not expect to recover your prints in one piece without damage. Removal will often result in curling, crinkling, or tearing of the photos.

Other photo mounting materials to consider are photo mounting sleeves. Much like the pockets into which your pictures slip within a photo album, these sleeves are transparent but have an adhesive backing so that they can also be mounted anywhere, much the same as the photo corners already discussed. The advantage of these devices over the corners is that you have a complete protective covering over your photo, meaning that dust, dirt, fingerprints, and other harmful materials are kept off your pictures.

Archival photograph mounting can be an important task, and choosing the right tools to make sure that these monuments to the past are completely safe requires the utmost care and concern. You can’t just use double stick tape on the back of these prints and be satisfied. Preservation techniques must be administered, making sure that there can be no damage to any of the photographs in question. Laminating, trimming, and mounting photographs is an important obligation that should never be taken lightly and should be handled with extreme precision.