ROL just pointed out the aesthetic felony of recropping someone else's work by redefining it with a window mat that covers some of the image area itself. There's another very important reason not to do this photographic prints. The mat expands and contracts with humidity. Therefore the sharp bevel edge of the mat will gradually start sawing into the print emulsion itself, or at least leave a long-term burnishing scuff. A good framer will always use a burnishing bone to slightly relieve this sharp angle, but even so, a valuable fiber-based print should not have the mat edge ever over the actual image area. Every legit conservator should know this by now. I got pissed as heck once when someone dropped on of my framed prints, damaged the frame and overmat itself (but not the image), then took it, along with a bunch of others prints I sold them to a local commercial framer, who then smaller-resized all the mounts mats with equal borders, just cause he was too lazy to use different setting on separate sides of the mats, which totally screwed up the visual balance of how I intended those things to
be viewed.
.
