AC's U-Size Mats Instructions
by Adrienne Cleveland
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Using the Actions
Tiny Mats
Just set your background color to the color you want to use for the mat, and run either
the HiRez or websized version, depending on the size of the image.
The tiny mats don't require any additional input from you.
Other Mats
Set the background color to the color you want to use for the mat, and run either
the HiRez or websized version, depending on the size of the image. The actions will stop several
times for your input.
Setting the Mat Size
When the action stops for you to choose the size of your mat, you have two choices:
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Centered Image: just set the size you want, and the image will be centered on the mat.
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Asymmetrical Mat: set the dimensions larger than you want, so after the action ends, you can crop to the size you want.
First, Size your Image
Choose "Image/Image Size" to get your image to the size and resolution you want. Remember that the mat will be added to the outside of the image, so if you want your final, matted image to be 14 x 11 inches, you'll want your image itself to be
smaller than that.
Now, run one of the mat actions
Method 1: Centered Image
If you want an Asymmetrical mat, skip down to "Method 2."
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The action will stop for you to specify the size of the final, matted image.
As you can see, the actual (current) size of this image is 12 x 8 inches. If we want to mat this to
fit an 14 x 11 frame, we can just set the New Size to read 14 inches by 11 inches.
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Controlling Mat Texture
The actions will stop so you can specify what texture (if any) you want.
If you don't want any texture, uncheck "Bevel and Emboss."
If you want to change the texture, click "Texture" to highlight it, and then adjust the scale
and depth to your liking. You can also choose a different pattern, if you want.
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The image will be centered in the mat.
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Method 2: Asymmetrical Mat
The action will stop to let you
specify the size of the final, matted image. As above, the actual (current) size of this image is 12 x 8 inches.
If we want to mat this to
fit an 14 x 11 frame, and we want the "extra" space to be at the bottom, we want to make the
mat high enough that we can crop it later.
We specify 14 inches wide and 16 inches high, to allow plenty of room
for cropping the height later.
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Controlling Mat Texture
The actions will stop so you can specify what texture (if any) you want.
If you don't want any texture, uncheck "Bevel and Emboss."
If you want to change the texture, click "Texture" to highlight it, and then adjust the scale
and depth to your liking. You can also choose a different pattern, if you want.
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Setting up the Crop Tool
After the mat action has finished, we want to crop the result to 14 x 11 inches.
To make it easy, we set the dimensions of the Crop Tool to 14 x 11 inches.
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Drawing with the Crop Tool
Since we made the mat exactly the right width, we just draw the crop tool across the entire
width of the image, which will give us a size of exactly 14 x 11 inches.
We'll position it in the next step.
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Positioning the Crop Area
Now we use the mouse to click and drag the crop area to its final position. In this case, we positioned it so the top
of the mat is the same width as the sides, leaving the "extra" mat at the bottom.
When we have it positioned, we double-click to complete the crop.
As you can see, we have left more mat at the bottom than at the top.
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Using the "Extra" Space
After the mat action ends, you can make many uses of the "extra" space you've added.
For example, you can use the Text Tool to add text.
If you want to put text on a textured or dark mat, you might want to create a "box" for the
text. Here's one way to do it.
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I set the Background Color to a light color from the image.
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I used the Rectangular Marquee Tool to draw a rectangle.
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I did a "Cut" (Ctrl-X or Edit/Cut) to create the white area.
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I used the Text Tool to add the text.
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A Different Example
In this example, when I ran the mat action, I created a very wide mat.
After the mat action finished, I did my cropping to create a *very* lopsided mat, to leave room for text on the right side.
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Adding an Outer Edge
The mats are created without any true outer edge, so you can crop them as you please and/or add frames to them.
Because of this, the mats, espcially if not textured, tend to blend into the background if they aren't framed.
This is most apparent when the background is the same color as the mat.
In cases where you want to "finish" your mat by adding an outer edge, just run the AddFineLine action.
Here's a "Before" and "After" example.
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Before Adding Fine Line
The mat "disappears" into the background.
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After Adding Fine Line
The mat is separated from the background by a fine line.
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And here's another way to "finish" your mat: run the AddOuterBevel action.
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Turning off the Instructions
Some of the actions contain "Stops" that explain what you need to do next. After running the actions a few times,
you may want to turn off these instructions so your actions will run faster. Here's how:
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Open the action by clicking the little arrow just to the left of the action name. DO NOT click the checkmark
or the rectangular icon.
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Scroll down in the action to see the Stops. Click the checkmark to the left of each Stop to uncheck it.
From now on, the instructions will not appear when you run this action.
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For more examples of the mats, see
this page.
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