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It takes less than 30 seconds to frame a picture.
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Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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$1 frames for your photo prints? You bet - if you know the secret


August 10, 2003


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard

   The best things in life aren't always free. Sometimes they cost $1.
   Take my latest cheapskate discovery. I'm an avid digital photographer, and I never feel a print from my treasured Epson photo printer is ready for viewing unless it is properly framed. But that costs money, as much as $12 for a simple frame for an 8 X 10 image.
   But not any more. I've been dollarized. I buy my frames at the dollar store.
   Don't ask my which dollar store I mean. I have no idea. I just drop into the one down the street every few days and pick up a few more frames. The one up the street has them, too. And so does the one in the big shopping center many miles away. They're all different chains, and they all have $1 frames. The glass itself in these frames would cost more than $1 at your local frame shop, so you're getting a tremendous bargain.
   The dollar stores I shop at have big frames, small frames and frames in between. They have amazingly fancy ones -- frames made of pottery clay that look like they could grace a White House reception -- and beguilingly cute ones with little colored hearts and lovely cutouts for small photos.
   And they have the ones I adore. They're very simple, almost austere, in both finished and unfinished wood. They're designed to frame an entire 8 1/2 by 11-inch (letter-size) page. I'm sure someone thinks the ideal use for these frames is to make certificates look good.
   Bah. Framebug. I use them to show off my 8 1/2 X 11 photos. They're ideal. I print my photo, pop off the back of the frame and slip the photo inside. That's all. It takes less than 30 seconds to frame a picture.
   But there's a trick to getting it right. If you don't do a little one-time preparation, all your photos might end up lopsided in the frame, with a big border on one end and a small border on the other.
   Here's why: Your printer probably puts a wide white border on the top or bottom of the page when it prints documents. That same border is used when you print photos, too, in most cases, and this makes the image a misfit in that 8 1/2 X 11-inch frame.
   So you have to persuade your printer to use equal borders all around.
   (If your printer does that already, without any coaxing, you have my congratulations. Your printer might even be able to print right to the edges of the page all around, too. That's even better. But keep in mind that I'm referring to 8 1/2 X 11-inch paper, not 8 X 10-inch. Some printers perform edge-to-edge printing only on 8 X 10 paper or smaller sizes, not 8 1/2 X 11-inch paper.)
   All printers have slightly different print software, so I can't tell you how to change yours step by step. But the idea should be the same for all models. You simply reset the margins so they're equal all the way around.
   For my Epson 2000P photo printer, I went a step further by creating actual printing templates. For my OS X Macintosh, I used a commercial template maker from www.econtechnologies.com. (It's designed to work with Portraits & Prints, a program I consider essential for modern Macs.) For my Windows 2000 PC, I created a template using Qimage from www.ddisoftware.com.
   My templates provide perfect borders all around an 8 1/2 X 11-inch print. I keep a dozen or more 8 1/2 X 11 dollar store frames handy at all times. My photos are always ready to pop into the frames.