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Cropping is the term used to describe the removal of unneeded background from your photos. Cropping can be as simple as rounding off the corners of the photograph or more complicated, such as cutting your photos into shapes of circles, stars, or hearts.
To crop a photo, select the photos that you would like to cut. Decide on a shape that will flatter the photograph. Be careful not to remove any interesting or important background. Photos of your family standing in front of the family's car, for example, may be important historical information for your family in the future. It is best to leave historical items such as cars, houses, and furniture. In the future, these items will be almost as interesting as the subjects in the photos.
There are many templates available to assist you in cropping your photos. Some of the templates available include squares, rectangles, circles, hearts, stars, triangles, and teddy bears.
To use a template for cropping a photo:
1. Place the template over your photo
2. Trace lightly with a pencil
3. Cut along the pencil line.
If you want to keep the original shape of the photo, only making it a bit smaller, simply cut off 1/4 inch around each side. You can use a paper trimmer if you have one available to easily snip off the edges. Or you can use a ruler. Trace a light line with a pencil, and cut the line with a pair of straight edge scissors.
Matting Your Photos
Matting is a simple way to make your layouts look elegant! Matting is done by simply laying your photos on a piece of cardstock paper and cutting a border about 1/4 to ½ inch larger than the picture. Matting gives the photos a framed look. You can use one color or a combination of several colors as mats.
When deciding on a paper color or pattern to be used for matting, try to choose a color that coordinates with the photos. The color scheme of the mat should enhance and compliment your photos. Using a color similar to the subject's clothing for a mat works well. Use coordinating shades of a similar color to add pizzaz to your pages.
To cut your mats, you can use straight edge scissors, pattern-edge scissors or a combination of both to add design to your matting. Place an oval shaped photo into an oval mat and then onto a larger rectangular mat for a photo-frame look.
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