If you have not yet fallen in love with my photo treatments, you might not appreciate what goes into the process of creating them for you.  Here are some things that set these treatments apart:

1. When you buy traditional matting, your picture is fitted to the available mattes.  With our treatments, the matting is matched to your photo, and is often created from aspects of your photos.

2. Once your digital photo has been matted, there is no slippage, no need for subsequent adjustments, and the matte will remain as fresh as the photo.  If you choose to print your matted photos and hang them in conventional frames, you can print a fresh copy as often as needed, at a minimal expense.  This is not true for traditional mattes bought in stores.

3. Custom matting can be created for your pictures that does not force you to choose from a bunch of inappropriate templates, or limited supplies.

4. Your matting costs are minimal when compared with having a picture matted for framing using traditional methods.

5. You can have your photos reproduced with a variety of matting choices that can be easily interchanged according to your tastes.

6. Turn around time for photo matting is quicker and much less expensive than taking pictures to a frame shop for mounting.

These are just a few of the reasons why you should consider this fun way to enrich your photographic efforts.  If you are new to the idea, grab a couple of your photos and upload them to the site.  Matting a photo costs about the same as printing a digital picture in a discount photo print shop.  Since you pay nothing until you approve your photos, there is nothing to lose in giving us a try.  Let me know how I can serve you today.

Matted Photos

Just one photo accent possible with digital matting.

No matter what kind of pictures you take, some of the least likely photos can inspire others to create something interesting from them.  This selection was inspired by a wad of paper that I hope will bring some smiles.  Click on the image to get a higher resolution look at the picture.

Humorous Compositions

Turning the mundane into a work of art - Matte Watch

Matted photos provide a nice foundation for greeting cards.  The following example shows how to turn your photos into a greeting that will make an impression and be appreciated by the recipient.  Since they can put these greetings in their digital picture frame, your sentiments can be appreciated all year long.  Using your own creations also help to ensure your greetings are one of a kind.  To look at this picture in higher resolution, click on the image. 

Custom Greeting Cards

Send a digital greeting that never gets old.

This week brings another round of dazzling digital award design ideas that bring unexpected glories to a deserving audience.  My first award brings prestige to my endeavors, straight from the Famous Academy of Bloggers and Technicians in honor of imagination found right here at Matte Watch.  The composition brings a rich highlight to the selected photo of a fine sculpture which provides the central theme for this award.  With any luck, the site will be honored with more of these accolades.  If your site deserves a similar honor, you are welcome to comment on why you should be in line to receive your own award.  So far, the Academy has only issued two awards, which is one more reason why Matte Watch belongs to an elite group.

Imagination is a wonderful thing...especially when it is recognized.

The next award suggests a concept that is rarely found among neighbors across the country today.  Made from the fall photo of a quiet Leawood Kansas location, the award suggests something that can be shared to bring any neighborhood closer together and express pride in the community.  Since the award is a digital composition, everyone on the block could easily share in the recognition on a regular basis.

Could this be your neighborhood? Yes.

My third award for this month could be used to honor those individuals who are able to look to the future for better days and dreams ahead, and who actively pursue bringing advancements to life.  The photo composition is used to represent that visionary focus into infinity, taken on the landscape of the Nelson Art Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.  Who do you know that is deserving of this fine form of recognition?

The world of tomorrow, are you ready?

The final award installment is aimed toward the unsung heroes that bring us all a sense of tranquility through the art of a well planned landscape.  The matted photo shows just how much beauty can be added with a splash of color from fall blooms, and well planned fall colors.  I would like having lunch on this patio, surrounded by so much beauty, I might forget about wanting to go back inside to work on a warm afternoon.

Have you noticed your landscape today?

This week begins with showing off four new digitally matted pictures, using four variations of matting compositions which help to accent photo highlights, raise the quality of the content, and challenge traditional matting techniques with some unusual flair.  Using a digital photo frame to display your matted photos gives you the ability to have an excellent showcase for your creative works at far less cost than matting and framing your pictures using traditional methods.  If you are still not convinced that a digital picture frame is the answer, these compositions can be printed and framed using traditional frames, or as screen wallpapers on your computer.  I use all three ways to keep my pictures out where I can see them.  Well, it is time to deliver the goods.

My first picture of the week was used to make a birthday card for my brother last month, so I thought I would run it through the presentation cycle for this month.  I took the picture in Overland Park because I thought the sculptor did a good job of capturing that mental state of children when they glide off into their imagination and spend time living where they want to be, rather than where they are.

Plane, bird, or rocket, this metal kid is on his own cloud.

Second on the list is a photograph with more subtle matting highlights, and the bright fall colors of a neighborhood walk on a sunny day.  It is always great to watch the leaves turn vivid colors and think about somebody else having to rake them up when they finally come down.  This year has not been so nice around here, so I got out one of my shots from the past.+

I am always a sucker for autumn colors.

The third matted photo was also one of my favorite past fall pictures.  I did something a bit different with the combination of highlights, textures, and the accent lines around the outer matte edges.  These kinds of simple variations would turn out quite expensive if they were produced using traditional matting. 

Country Club Plaza - a nice place for colorful autumn shots.

My last photo in the sequence was taken on the grounds of the Nelson Art Museum in Kansas City.  Some might immediately ask, “Where are the people?” My answer is that for some reason, I seem to live in the part of our dimension where I can get lots of shots with no people in them, even in crowded places.  It might be somewhat related to all the time I spent in my younger years talking to people’s backs at parties.  I just seem to be where nobody else wants to go for the moment.  At any rate, the matting for this photo accents that unusual perspective with its nebulous outer limits quality of colors and blobs.  You have just crossed over into the Twilight Zone.

Picture if you will, being alone...very alone.

As this week begins a new month, I thought about taking a slightly new direction with my digital photo matting techniques.  Starting this week, I will begin showing how four different photos can go from the kind of thing you bring out make your late house guests go home, into something that will have them watching the whole show on your digital picture frame.  I will take some digital photos through a sequence of transformations which will eventually cover all the kinds of treatments I have offered to do for my Matte Watch audience.  Each subsequent week, I will take the matted photos and turn them into next stage of transformation until we circle back to the beginning with a new set of pictures.  This way, everyone can see how the photos look in the various treatment venues. 

The first matted photo is a new style of digital photo matting that incorporates some fractal manipulation of the central theme photograph.  As I have said before, I know that taking flower shots is probably about the most usual thing a fledgling photographer can do, but I like to matte these pictures and use flower shots in all kinds of different ways.  So, if you are some kind of “snooty” pro who wants to wise me up, then go ahead and show me what you have that is better.

Sometimes a picture can be made to compliment itself.

Now I know that more traditional matting styles can be more appropriate than creating the colorful designs and borders found in this week’s fare, but I felt like dabbling with some more unusual designs this week, so I went ahead with it.  There is certainly a lot to be said for going too far overboard in trying to make the beauty of flowers even fancier.  The next item might fit the category of too much, but I blame my wife because she said she liked it.

Too much dressing for a flower shot? You decide.

The third digital photo matting takes a complimentary colored spherical design using colors from the photograph, and drops it behind the main subject photo.  I liked this design for its variation away from the usual, and the beautiful flower as well.

Not all mattes need to be typical.

The final offering for this week’s digital photo matting parade of images uses a subtle weave of matte colors to create a delicate texture in the photo matting.  Next week, you will be able to see the digital calendar designs I create from these four matted photos.  Are you excited?  I knew you would be.

Use more subtle accents to create a nice texture.