I am just about ready to put up a new batch of pictures to my site. Before doing so I have been cleaning up a few things and reconsidering a few things. One of those things is the use of picture borders.
A lot of people use a border when posting to a forum such as this, as it just seems to give it a little something 'extra'. I have been using borders on my relatively new website for the same reason. I generally use a triple border similar to a picture framing; very thin inside line, larger matt and a little smaller 'frame'. My matt colour is driven by the picture content; frequently by using the colour sampler to select a colour out of the picture (sometimes tweaking the colour).
I did a quick sampling of some sites. Some use a thick white border while some use a very thin white border. Some use black instead. Some use a thin grey/thick black border. Some use no border at all. Quite a wide range of styles.
I would be interested to know what people's thoughts are on use of borders for web sites. Specifically:
a) what do you think of use of borders?
b) if you like borders, do you prefer a standard look across all pictures or do you like it more when it is optimized/customized for each picture?
c) if you like borders, do you prefer the simple look of a single border or one that is composite (two or more)?
I am at the point right now where it would be a bit of work to redo borders, but could still be done. Over the next three months I anticipate adding a lot of pictures, after which point it would an awful lot of work to change the borders.
Borders are useful to help pull a viewer into a photo and hold their attention there, but the border should be cooperate not compete with the dominant tone of the background.
The knee jerk reaction is to add a white border to mimic the look of a photo print. White borders became the norm because of the way the easel held the paper under the enlarger. But when a white border is put around a dark photo looking at it is like driving on a two-lane road at night into the high beams an oncoming car. The white border will cause the loss of perception of the shadow detail.
Perception "anchors" on the darkest in lightest tones in our field of vision. If the photo has an overall dark background a dark mat or border will help guide and pull the eye to the contrasting center. Here's a shot where I changed the wall and clothing in Photoshop, but kept the face the same. Note how the background tone affects perception of highlight and shadow detail..
Putting a dark mat on a photo will make the shadow seem to have more detail than in an unmatted version of the same photo because they are lighter in comparison to the mat.
In real life our eyes are always scanning and detecting motion. When looking at a still photo the eyes move and create the sensation of movement. Borders can control and re-direct that movement. A darker border is very effective for landscapes and other photos with sky filling the top of the photo. Without a mat the bright sky pulls the eye rapidly over the darker foreground and up and out the photo. Putting a darker mat around the photo will act like the bumper of a billiards table and bounce the eye back down towards the foreground.
If you are doing a gallery you'll want continuity and the best choice is a medium gray which will balance equally well with light and dark background shots. Jumping between light and dark photos can be visually jarring so another strategy would be to separate them in different galleries with compatible backgrounds, or arrange them so there is a grouping on a dark background, followed by some on gray and finishing with white.
Mats are also a good way to add balancing negative space to tightly cropped shots. Often it is impossible to crop out a distraction when shooting, but if the photo is cropped in editing and a mat is used to fill the space in a non-distracting way the balance will be restored. With portraits making the mat wider on the bottom for a close cropped shot provides the balance the torso would and avoids the "floating head" look.
When in doubt try different color mats on a photo.
What I do is sample a color in the foreground subject for the rule, then a deep shadow from the photo tone for the mat. I select all and stoke the rule (1-2 px depending on photo size) then expand the canvas which adds the mat using the background color. I'll then use the magic wand to select the just the mat then open Hue/Saturation and try different hues and values until I get the balance I think works best. Usually the mat on a dark photo winds up slightly darker that the deepest shadow detail.
