Mounting Large Photographs

Hello all,

I'm not sure if this is the right forum, but as I'm shooting with a

MF I'll take a shot here.

I recently had some large panoramics (30"x50") professionally

mounted. A dry/heat process was used as I was told this was the

preferred method for the best results. When you look at the

photographs in even light they look fine. However, once the

photographs are hung on the walls and are hit with ceiling lights,

some "texturing" is quite noticable. Its tough to describe what it

looks like. Basically, if you look at the reflection of a light off

the photograph, the light has a "halo" of sorts.

Question: Is this a normal result of having a photograph mounted?

Question: Is there a method to avoid this?

Thanks.

David.

I have had very limited experience with dry mounting, but I'm curious as to what type of

background substrate was used. I've seen this sort of texturing on softer materials such as

foamcore and gatorboard. Masonite seems to be the ideal backing. I usually spraymount

as needed generally because I'm mounting for portfolios or client boards. I have had good

results also using a laminate over photographs that I'm mounting and not framing. A

lustre laminate is nice as it does not reflect, but is smooth. Of course you wouldn't want to

laminate a fine art print or anything of value. Sorry I'm not of more assistance.

I'm interested in this as well. I'll be having 4 of my panos dry mounted onto 1/2" gator on Monday. I was told that addition of the UV protective laminate would visibly "degrade" the image. Did you have them apply a protective laminate to the photograph?

I decided to forgo the UV laminate and mount the photos (12"x36") in matte finish for the best possible detail retention.

This "halo" that you are describing may be un-even "reticulation" of the UV laminate when its applied. I've seen the same thing for several display prints at the printer to be convinced of this.

No, no UV laminate was added. And it is also on 1/2" gatorboard.

Thanks.

I used to work as a mounter/ finnisher and in the early days (late

70's early 80's) we used a heating method. A certain combo of

heat and pressure was used depening on the size of the

print...trial and error to figure out the time and temp. Over the

print I laid release paper about 1" wider than the print and over

that a 1/2" foam to protect the print from the heated paltten. Now

lots of things can go wrong here, relaese paper overused,

sponge foam overused uneven heat ,uneven substraight etc. In

the 90's "Cold" mounting was more popular and in my opinion

better, more surfaces could be mounted to and I worked with

48"X96" prints regularly... so your prints are not considered that

big. The mounting part is not too bad but when you had to

laminate that's a bitch as is mouning to plexi-glass. The life of a

mounter can be hell it's easy to piss off the printers when you

screw up a print. It could have been uneven heat the rollers used

these days do double duty you can heat them up or use cold and

at times you get uneven temps in the roller, but it's a tough one to

call.

I've done a fair amount of dry-mounting of my own prints. Not at the

professional level, but quite a few nonetheless. One thing I learned early is

not to mount directly to Fomcore or Gatorboard. I mount to an acid-free 10pt

board. It's nice and smooth and makes a great substrate for the photo. Then

that is sandwiched with Fomcore on the bottom and window mats on the top

and put into the frame. If mounted diretly to Fomcore, I found that I had some

humidity problems and general "uneven" look to the mounted print. Of

course, traditional dry-mounting using a heat activated tissue is not suitable

for any of the new materials used in digital printers. Cold mounting, using a

vacuum frame is the way to go. But all that is pretty expensive, especially for

large size materials.