All You Ever Wanted To Know About Picture Frames
The original use of picture frames was to protect and support a painting they a person wished to hang on a wall. A person could nail or screw the picture frame to the wall instead of being forced to puncture the painting which was held within the frames four borders.
Protecting the picture is another great use of the picture frame. A sheet of glass can be put over the picture and between the frame's four borders. Plexiglas has replaced glass in most cases today. This is all done in order to prevent insects from landing on and damaging the picture. It also keeps dust and other airborne things from harming the picture. Finally people are kept away from the surface of the painting by the glass.
The picture frame does more than just safe guard the picture it protects; it also enhances the picture visually, by adding to its beauty. In some cases the frame itself can be considered a work of art. Woodcarvings are put into picture frames by artists who like to express themselves in that fashion. Metal workers can do likewise by molding designs in to the surface of metal frames, thus adding to the beauty of the painting.
Today not all pictures are used to house beautiful works of art. They are used with our family portraits, baby pictures, and baseball team photographs. At first the picture frames that were used to hold these types of pictures could only be plain wood or metal. The average person would not want to buy a hand crafted frame for a picture that they would merely hang on their wall.
Modern technology has greatly changed household picture frames. Electronic picture frames allow people to insert light bulbs into the picture frame. This could add just a little more Christmas cheer to our holiday pictures, with red and green lights surrounding it.
The most recent advancement to picture frames is digital picture frames. By using digital frames a person can look at their picture without physically having them inside the frame. A picture is taken with a digital camera and then loaded into the digital frames computer. The digital screen inside the picture frame can then display any picture uploaded. The digital frame can also be set to show a number of pictures on a slide show, which means that the frame will show a number of pictures on after the other.
It would take dozens of normal picture frames to display the amount that a single digital frame can. MP3 audio files can be stored inside the digital frames allowing a person to hear music while the see look at the picture. Some people might say these factors would make the digital frames superior to traditional ones, while others argue it is not comparable because you do not actually get to look at the picture, just its image on a screen. These things are for the consumer to decide, they can say which will meet their needs and their visual preferences.