Removing unwanted background from the photographs is called cropping. Cropping
ranges from rounding off corners to cutting shapes from the photograph. You must not remove any important background from the photograph you are going to
crop. Select the shape you want to cut with care keeping all the important details in mind.
Make sure you leave items which you think will be of historical
importance for your family like photos of cars, houses, furniture, etc.
You can also use a template to assist you in cropping photographs. This makes it look
neat and even. Some of the templates available are squares, round, rectangles, triangles, circles, etc.
You can trace the template on the photograph lightly with a pencil and cut it along
the line.
If you don’t want to cut the photograph you can keep to its original shape and only
trim the edges to make it look straight and neat.
Matting
Matting is placing a photograph on a card stock and cutting a margin along its
sides. This gives an effect of framing for the photograph. You can use various colour combinations to make it look
very attractive.
The colour of the background you choose should match with the colour scheme in the
photograph. This ensures the colour scheme compliments and enhances the photograph.
Cutting of the mat can be done using either a straight edged or a patterned edged
scissors. Using a colour similar to the subject's clothing for a mat works well