A cut edge is a boundary, not a pattern
The frames on this page work differently from the rest of the shelf. A striped band is paint on a rectangle; a scallop changes where the picture stops. Everything outside the cut is removed from the photograph and left genuinely empty, which is why these frames arrive with PNG selected and why the corners of the saved file come out clear rather than white.
That also means the band width does two jobs at once. It sets how much of the picture the frame covers, and it sets the scale of the cut itself — arc width, tooth width, tear depth and hole spacing are all multiples of the band rather than fixed pixel figures. Widen the band and the scallops grow with it instead of multiplying.
The controls on this page
Arc width is the target repeat, given as a multiple of the band. Arc depth is how far each bump reaches, as a share of the band, so at 100% the scallops touch the outer edge of the picture and at 20% they barely dimple it. Tear depth and roughness replace those two on the deckle and the torn paper: depth is how far the edge wanders, roughness is how many small irregularities ride on top of the large ones.
Under the tear controls sits the seed. It is the only number on this site worth writing down, because it is the difference between a tear you liked and a tear you have to hunt for again.
Where these edges stop being a good idea
- On a panorama the cut edges crowd. A proportion of the short edge is a small share of a very long one, so a 6:1 picture gets scallops that are tight on the short sides and sparse on the long ones. Widening the band evens it out and eats more of the picture; no setting does both.
- A deep cut on a photograph whose subject runs to the edge removes part of the subject. That is not a fault in the frame — it is what a cut edge is — but it is worth checking the corners before saving, because the corners are where a scallop takes the most.
Questions about the cut
- What decides how many scallops there are?
- The arc width control, expressed as a multiple of the band. At 1.5 each arc is one and a half times as wide as the band is thick, so a thicker band gives fewer and larger scallops at the same setting. The count then comes out of the arithmetic rather than out of a number you type: the side length divided by the target, rounded, and the arcs resized so they fit that count exactly.
- Can the scallops point inward instead of outward?
- The postage perforation frame is that shape. Its semicircles bite into the edge rather than bulging off it, on a fixed repeat, snapped to the side length the same way the scallops are. Between those two and the pinked zigzag, most of what people mean by a cut edge is covered.
- How is the deckle edge different from the torn paper one?
- They come from the same noise, sampled differently. The deckle is three harmonics joined by curves, which gives the soft irregular waver of a mould-made paper edge. Torn paper is five harmonics joined by straight segments, which gives the sharper facets of a sheet pulled apart by hand. Both close exactly at the corners, because the noise has a period of one lap of the outline.
- Does a cut edge cost anything when the picture gets big?
- No. The outline is a path, and the number of points in it comes from each side's share of the perimeter rather than from its pixel length — so the same seed draws the same edge on a 900-pixel preview and an 8000-pixel export. That is also what makes the preview worth trusting: it is the same shape at a smaller size.