The right mounting techniques protect your images

Mounting is the method used to secure a printed image to a mount or backing board.

This ensures that your print stays flat, for example if you’re framing it and want to make sure the paper doesn’t curl under the glass, as well as protect the print against damage such as edge dings, creases, tears and punctures.

DRY MOUNTING

Dry mounting is the most common type of mounting we do. For this type of mount, we use special presses (both vacuum and roller) to adhere your print onto a rigid or semi-rigid backing board.

We use several types of backing boards with different qualities including thickness, weight, dimensional stability, puncture-resistance and cost.

Each material is a quality choice for what it does, and we avoid materials that negatively impact your prints, such as through a chemical reaction to acids or glues.

Our main options for backing boards include:

• mat boards (including Rising cotton rag boards)
• foam core (including Gilman Brothers MountCor and MountCor Canvas)
• Sintra
• acrylic/plexiglass
• aluminum composite sheet (including Dibond and PolyMetal)
• aluminum

Foam Core

A choice like foam core, is cost effective and light. It’s great for many common uses including framing; but foam core isn’t necessarily dimensionally stable over a long time. Larger pieces on foam core may bow or flex in different ways under the influence of heat, humidity or other environmental change.

Sintra

A material like Sintra, which is a closed-cell PVC sheet, is medium in weight cost, and comes in different thickness. It’s much harder to puncture than foam core, and so protects the print much better. But it also may flex because it’s not rigid.

Acrylic/Plexiglass

Acrylic is similar in its qualities, but instead of being solid white or black, the sheet is transparent. Like Sintra, acrylic will flex.

Aluminum

If you need a backing material that is dimensionally stable over the long term, choices include solid aluminum sheets, and aluminum composite materials (ACM) like Dibond and PolyMetal. ACM sheets are two very thin aluminum layers with a thicker layer of plastic in between. ACM is lighter and lower cost than pure aluminum sheets, and both are very rigid. This is considered the “gold standard” of mounting options, but the quality come at a higher cost.

Archival

A key consideration is that once we dry mount your print using the above approaches, it would no longer be considered “archival” under the strictest sense. We do have some archival mounting approaches that we can use to ensure the highest standard of longevity for your print.

If you’re highly concerned about archival options, need a different specific material for your project, ask us for options.

Help picking the right mounting

If you want suggestions or would like a different type of mount for visual reasons, we can guide you through the choices of mounting, and may have other materials or approaches to recommend.