From mat layout to a print-ready file

Frames live at Frames in the header (the same account as your albums). Each frame project is one framed piece: a print at exact physical size, a mat with cut windows, and a moulding — priced live as you design, ordered through Brilliant Prints when your client says yes.

Every layout is cut at exact physical size. The sizes you'll see are in inches on the layout cards and centimetres in the workspace spec bar — both describe the same physical object.

Before your first share, set your studio name, website, brand colour and logo in Settings — they brand the review page your client opens, which should read as your studio's system, not ours.

As the shelf grows, the frames list keeps everything findable: search by title or client reference, filter by status, and sort by last edited, newest, or title. Cards carry decision chips — Approved, Wants more — with duplicate, delete and archive on hover.

New frame opens the layout picker — over a hundred multi-opening layouts: pairs, trios, grids, story walls. Filter by how many photos you're framing, the shape of the finished piece, the arrangement style, and overall size.

Reading a card: the name leads with the finished sheet size (matching the Overall line), Aperture is the size of each window your photos show through, and Spacing is the mat between windows. Click a card and you're in the workspace.

Inside the workspace, Change layout swaps the arrangement without losing your photos, and Request a new layout asks us for an arrangement that isn't in the catalogue — worth using when a client wants something specific, rather than compromising on a near-miss.

Drop photos anywhere on the page, or use the upload button — they land in the tray below the canvas. JPEG, PNG, WebP and TIFF are accepted, up to 200 MB each — iPhone HEIC photos are not, so set Camera → Formats to Most Compatible or export them as JPEG.

The tray works at shoot scale: filter by orientation to find portraits fast, switch tile density, and multi-select to clear outtakes. A Used badge marks photos already placed in an opening.

Drag a photo from the tray into an opening — or tap the opening, then tap the photo. Drag inside an opening to reframe. To crop tighter, click the photo first — then use the zoom slider, or click the percentage badge to open the crop view. Drop a photo onto an occupied opening to swap the two.

Each opening reports its effective print resolution after your crop, listed with its dimensions. Under 200 dpi we flag it and ask you to confirm — it will still print, just slightly softer than ideal. Under 150 dpi the download is blocked: a matted print under glass gets studied up close, and there's no hiding a soft file. Zoom out, or use a larger original.

The Design rail holds the physical choices — and it's ordered the way the piece is built, from the inside out: print, then mat, then frame.

The bar above the canvas reads the piece back in lab terms, updating with every change:

Framed size is the number that answers “will it fit above the sofa?”, so it's the one to say out loud in a viewing.

The price in the rail is live — every change to size, moulding width, mat border or opening count updates it. Click the total to see the lines.

Mat cutting adds a flat $3.30 for each opening after the first, and the ornate profile carries a premium. The total already includes the studio uplift, so it's the number to work from — add your own margin on top as you price the finished piece for your client.

This is the feature that closes wall-art sales. Instead of asking a client to imagine a framed print, you show them one hanging — real mat bevel, real moulding, real shadow, at true relative scale.

1. 1
   Finish the design first

   Lock layout, crops, moulding, width, mat and scale. A mockup reflects the spec at the moment it was rendered, so re-styling afterwards means re-rendering.
2. 2
   Choose a background

   A plain studio background is cleaner for a catalogue look; a room scene sells better, because it settles the “will it be too big?” question before it's asked.
3. 3
   Render

   It takes about ten seconds. Right-click or long-press to save the image if you want it for a message or a social post.
4. 4
   Build up to three options

   Render up to three versions and they become labelled Options your client flips between on the review link.

When you share, you choose how long the link stays open (7–90 days) and can set an optional passcode (4–6 digits) your client enters before the mockup opens — tell them the code separately, not in the same email as the link.

Their decision comes straight back to you: an Approved chip on your frames list, and the full readout — verdict, their chosen option, and any comment — in the workspace's Client feedback panel. An approval closes the review automatically — the link stays viewable but takes no more responses; a Reopen the review button in the feedback panel opens it again if your client needs another pass. You can also revoke the link outright from the share block — it stops working immediately.

Several pieces out for review at once? The Client links page (in the frames dashboard header) lists every review link you've shared — frames and albums together — with its status, the client's verdict, and the link ready to copy or preview. A Wants more chip is a buying signal: follow it up the same day.

There are two ways to finish, and the buttons say which is which.

Preview the print file runs the final checks — every opening filled, resolution above the floor — and shows you the flat sheet. Download print-ready image, inside that preview, is the one that renders and downloads: an edge-to-edge JPEG at print resolution.

The file contains the print only — no mat is baked in, because the real mat is cut physically and laid over the print. The window geometry travels alongside the print for the mat cutter, so the windows land exactly on your photos with the mat overlapping each print edge cleanly.

From there, How to order this print shows the specs to carry across — frame, print sheet, framed size, mat and price — and Open Brilliant Prints takes you to the site to place it yourself.

A single framed piece is one sale. A wall is several of them hung together — and it is a much easier thing for a client to say yes to once they can see it.

Under Walls, pick a shape and a set of photos and it builds every piece for you — each sized for the shape of the photographs going in it — already hung at the gallery standard of 57″ to the centre of the group (or centred, on a wall lower than that). Everything is drawn at true scale against the real wall, so the sizes on screen are the sizes on the wall. Arrange re-hangs the set in another shape, offering only the shapes this set can read as; Match sizes evens out a row on the edge it already shares, or turns a mix into a set. No tool puts one frame on another or inside your minimum gap — it spaces them out, or tells you why it can’t.

Add a photograph of the actual room and the arrangement sits in their room at true size — that is the version clients react to. Shot straight on, mark three things: something you measured, the floor, and the wall’s left edge. Shot at an angle, drag a handle onto each of the wall’s four corners instead. A wall you photographed for a single frame can be reused here, and on a phone you can take the photo in the page.

Your client’s price is what they pay through the link. Until you set it the wall is “not for sale yet” and your client can only approve it; it can’t be lower than what the pieces cost you.

Share sets that price and sends one link for the whole wall — by email from here, so you hear when they open it and get a nudge if they go quiet. From the same place you can print the hanging schedule: hook heights and left-edge distances for every piece, measured from the floor, numbered row by row from the top, left to right. One order sends every piece to the lab together.