PDF export still lacks quality for the printing industry. This plugin works well for very small products but it's a nightmare for bigger prints like posters and even high quality calendars. On the Admin, I still cannot export a PDF for all of my products with the needed size. Support says and I quote:

"The developer says that this is simply due to the limitations of the server. With images that are that very large and then scaled up this is simply only possible to a certain limit. It should be better when you use the .jpg format instead of .png. Other then that you can always use an image editing program to scale the output image."

I am very sorry but this is not what I paid for - more than once! The image I attach is a print of what you promise on Code Canyon. You say "fit any product" and "no limitation". Not to being able to print high quality posters (100x70cm or smaller) or calendars without using Photoshop is a huge limitation. If I get 50 orders per day (between books and calenders with at least 8 pages which), I will not be doing anything else than just being in Photoshop the whole day long to adjust exported files and increasing resolution (which will also inevitable kill image quality!), if I even ever catch up!

It is also very poor to provide a solution that is on a server that is not able to export a PDF that is only 1136 per 796mm with 300 DPI. Printin industry has standard paper sizes (https://www.prepressure.com/library/paper-size). How can one work then? How can admin solution work? High quality print needs also PNG quality images! JPG is great for web, PNG is what should be used to print - always!

Summary:

• Better server capacity for bigger PDF files export with PNG images, at least 1000 x 700mm and 300DPI
• Export compatible with Printing industry ISO sizes: https://www.prepressure.com/library/paper-size and multipage documents
  

To be fair - in the defense of the plugin - anything from A4 downward is perfect. However, for the export on the new admin solution - I cannot say that I use it. I do all my exports on our own backend using the "old method" and this works great. We can export PDF in much larger sizes than A4. A2 export is fine too. 

I suggest trying to export PDF on the main admin panel on your backend, and try setting the DPI to 300 using the little menu on the right. This works too. 

As long as your image creation tools, like your designs etc are clear enough, it will export fine. 

What are you printing to if I can ask?

Yes. Increasing memory-limits was the first thing I did. But that didn't help. In our case PNG could work, but the files would have to have a high enough quality/resolution.

When I try to download a PDF with standard settings, the loading icon spins for a while, then stops, generating no files.

When I choose Image instead of PDF, I get a PNG-file that is 0 kb. Have had some luck with SVG, but not stable enough.

Loading the designed product is very slow as well, although the custom design is only a 156 KB logo and three lines of text, on a background image that is <180 KB.

What size canvas are you working with for your bigger products, Phil?

For us: To get a a 25x35 cm print area at 300 dpi on a long sleeve shirt, we need an area that is 2953x4134 px. With my background image of the shirt, this leaves my canvas at a giant 9000x9000 px.

Because of this I have to increase the font point-size about 10 times. Here is a screencast showing how the Curved Text behaves at 300+ pt:

Link: jumpsharedotcom/v/FYnHphGUjctXso5CV23w

YES. This is so incredibly important. I would also gladly pay $1000+ to see an easy way of exporting high quality files. We are not talking huge billboards or banners here. I am even having problems with small files (only 24x34cm or 9x13" at 300 dpi)! It's not many MBs, and shouldn't be a problem. I don't need many settings or file options, I just need the cropped bounding box area with the customised design (not the whole stage), at 300 dpi, and preferably in a file format that supports transparency, like PNG or PDF.

Your great plugin is basically limited to only work with smaller products or screen based ones, while you're still selling it off as a complete tool for all kinds of products and businesses. It's to focused on the customer/designing-part, and not what comes after, rendering it pretty much useless for us. We used Tshirtecommerce before, and it looks like I will have to go back to them, unless something happens here.

If you don't have time to do this, please hire someone to implement it, and send me and Joao the bill!

We cannot go for complicated changes, high resolution of canvas or mockup leads to problems in responsive , or adding texts, curving, uploading low resolution image, so on, 

we are not against "FPD" we are just expecting out something which is core requirement for printers like us , who manage designs above A3 size , 

let us wait for the update , and then we can come back to this , till then i am fixed with tshirtecommerce, 

but i rate FPD UI best ever compared to anyother, 

Hope for the best !! 

• Generated/Exported PDF/SVG files MUST come with bleed lines of AT LEAST 3mm!
• Colour profile of the PDF/SVG files MUST be Adobe PDF/X-1a:2001 and CMYK
• Canvas SHOULD already have 3mm bleed lines included by default or easily configurated in the product builder so that the admin doesn't have to spend hours or days trying to get them right to every single product and view, manually, one by one
• 300DPI is a must and a default on printing industry, no matter size of the document!
• Printing industry prints out LARGE and not only stickers and small phone cases. Think of wallpaper, billboards, roll-ups, posters, calendars, books, etc. Make the system robust enough to be able to work with that (exporting the files at 300DPI) or stop marketing your plugin as proper for that!
  

You do these 4 "musts" and the workflow will be:

1. Creating product and publish it
2. Receiving an order
3. Administrator generates a PDF/SVG
4. Administrator sends the generated file directly to printing machine
5. It gets printed - everybody happy
   

Without those, the process is:

1. Creating product and publish it
2. Making adjustments so that the bleeding line is OK both for the user and for the printing, for every single product and view, which takes countless hours and days
   
3. Receiving an order
4. Administrator generates a PDF/SVG, most of the times with low DPI because of the size of the document
5. Administrator has to artificially and manually increase DPI of the generated files which will definitely KILL the image quality and will take countless hours per product
6. After step 5, use Illustrator or inDesign to make the document ready for printing
   
7. Administrator sends the generated file directly to printing machine
8. It gets printed
9. The company prays so that the customer doesn't complain about the image quality and the placement of the images on the product and doesn't have to give money back

Do you see the difference @radykal?

Hi Radykal. Thanks, but this is not working very well for me. The download does not provide the Printing Box I set. It cuts off the design at a much smaller size.

Setting these new boxes, managing files from an external site, and having to wait while files are generated for each file for every product ordered takes a lot of time.

A perfect solution would generate the files from the existing bounding box as soon as the user clicks to add it to the cart, then just add a link to download the files in our admin order-screen or e-mail. The PDF-software could still be on your server, not ours, no? Time is money, so putting all this time on us instead of the client, means we either lose from profit or need to raise our prices (meaning less orders).

This really is the only really bad thing with FPD. I have tried and looked at several solutions, and you really have a great product here. But this is a dealbreaker, and it should be the only thing you work on – not making a Shopify version etc. Nobody would be able to compete with you if you did.

Site URL is russeprofilering.no, and one the orders that I tested was ID 58956 – with the line item 12165 being one I set Printing Box in (Standard Hoodie - Large). Generated file is attached here.

Your plan sounds good. But we get a lot of big orders, like the one mentioned here is for 25 products. In high season we can see 500+ products ordered in one day. That is close to two hours of wait time for generating files (not counting downloading). If it was on our own server, I'd rather have the extra traffic from a few abandoned carts than that cost of time. But, of course, since you keep all that traffic on your server, it's a whole different situation for you.

A good solution would be for it to generate files in the background some time after the order is completed. Every completed order will need files at some point. An even better solution would be if those files could also be synced to a Dropbox folder.

But clicking a link to get a file generated, with no more steps, sounds great to me for now. Hopefully it won't delay too long until we see it implemented. Good luck!

I like what you're saying about bleed and file formats, but lets start with what is absolutely 100% necessary: Easy access to high quality files. As long as this is in place, it's not hard to set up a folder workflow to convert files to how we want them (e.g. from an RGB PNG to a CMYK PDF). Bleed can be set up today, if you create your product right. Sure, this could/should be easier, but I think that's a different feature request.

As long as the files are generated before the order is sent, the process can be even 1 step easier then what you first described:

1. Creating product and publish it
   
2. Receiving an order with links to already generated files (300 DPI PNG, one link for each view)
   
3. Administrator downloads files to a "hotfolder/workflow" that converts it and can send it to the printing queue automatically
   
4. It gets printed - everybody happy
   

And yes, making it robust enough for bigger projects, as Joao says, is very important.