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Fancy Product Designer Multistep Product Configurator

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Implemented

Better PDF export on the admin

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:


image



5 people like this idea

I was told that Bleed was implemented, but i dont see anything in regards to showing it in the editor for the client.

Like a ruler button, but for margins, so Clients wont add anything in bleed or safe area

@Joao Figueiredo - don't be too harsh.

I'll tell you only one thing of your recommendations that will not be able to happen - the bleed lines. If they are to be implemented the whole printing process should be described to the customer in order to have a proper printing file with no need for manual work from your side.

This is impossible! 


The plugin is made to offer visualisation for the end product. If you want to have bleed line of iphone cover with sublimation plate how on earth will you offer your customer the proper visualisation so he can be confident in the product looks when ordering?
If I have a rechtangle and  I place some graphics in it (jpg) now I can put this vital design that I need just at the end of this jpg to be aligned with the end of my sublimation material. If I have visible bleed lines and you force your user to use them they will be confused will ask you tons of questions and believe me the support time invested will outweight the manual editing of those files.


Back on topic:


For me the most important thing is:

- full functionality on my site - I want to have all the functions of export in my admin section where I can work securely and quickly.

- FONTS export - this is really a must - I need all the fonts that my system have to be corectly exported, including spacing, color, rounded fonts, etc. At this moment every line of text that my customers order have to be redone in our vector software in order to print quality prints. Yes, the raster images may have to be redone but I would value pdf import of all vector information AS-IS this will really speed my work because most of my projects now are engraving items where there's only text. So proper font export, and proper values.

Has this been implemented on the jQuery version? If so how do we add bleed lines etc??

hi radykal , 

Happy to hear , that some development you are looking forward in this aspect of exporting high quality print files, 

i am happy to help you , but i have not purchased this plugin just because of this problem , 
so i could not raise the ticket to be part of beta test, 

any alternative ? if not no issues, 

thank you ! 

@radykal 

1) Final export most preferred format for printers is PNG , among your options .
2)300 DPI is must for printing sector who deal with garment printing , to provide accurate print for the customers. 
3) export must be like: Irrespective of layers used , output must be single image and RTP( ready to print ) 
4) export size of image must be exactly as bounding box, like if bounding box is set to A5 size( export must cover just A5 size) 

NOTE: above requirements are based on sublimation and DTG ( direct to garment) print technology, it may vary for screen printers. 
i print max size of garments of 42cm x 56cm .

thank you ! 

Sorry for not informing you guys about the latest development state. But I can say that we are close to the end of the first stable version.


Here a little preview of the new PDF export, so you can see that we really working on this.


http://recordit.co/OTll5jRv4q


As you can see, the scaling of images in the PDF is not working 100%, but we are close to have this fixed soon. The problem with the development is that we are using a third-party software for generating professional and high-res PDF. We invest a lot of money in this software, but its necessary because right now we could not find a open-source library that fits for our needs to have high-res PDFs.


The new PDF export will be exclusively available in our ADMIN solution, due we need to host the PDF software on our system, we can not deliver it with the plugin files.


Sooo...what can you expect?


  • You can define a printing area in every view, this area can be different from the actual canvas size. In future you do not need to create a very big canvas in order to create high-res images. Just use a canvas size that working well for the browser. Then define a printing area in MM, this area will be visible in the exported PDF. In ADMIN you can set the DPI for the embedded images.
  • You can even upload a "background pdf", this pdf can included the color profile etc. which is necessary for some printing industries. 
  • In ADMIN you will have new UI to see all orders easily and download the PDF from an order with one-click. No need to open it first in the order viewer.
  • In future: Auto-send mail with link to PDF. The system will send automatically a mail with the link to the high-res pdf when an order is made.

I hope it will satisfy your requested features for the PDF export. If we have this done, you will not find any product designer solution on codecanyon with this professional PDF export. You can even expect more features in the next month to improve the workflow from creating products to receiving orders. All the feature request that are marked as planned will be implemented with the new PDF export and at the end we will even offer some more features that will blow your mind.

Regards,
Rafael


any word on bleeds being visible for clients editor?

I am getting an error when trying to output PDF from the admin and no images can be retrieved. I had my webhost turn on CORS as the modal says but it still doesnt work. I understand its in beta but any idea how I can get it to work? Thanks

@Jason

Right now you can already generate PDF with 300 DPI unless your images are uploaded in high-res as well. Our application can not resample images from 72 dpi to 300, but this can not be done by any solution. I also wrote you a mail, maybe you can answer me there.

There is an easier way to make sure you get the highest quality print - I originally had problems with this plugin, but, since I've been playing around with it - having been originally declined a refund through PayPal, I must say I'm actually amazed at what is possible here. If you want to print larger quality images - there is an easy way to do it. 


1. Make your product, and make the product canvas size A4 (EU) and of course - Letter (US) in PIXELS. NOT MM. 

2. When you make your product, ensure that it is fully responsive on the front end so the canvas is correctly sized.

3. When you go to your FPD, call it via a custom hook and fill that out. Google how to do this, I can't remember the info off top of my head.

4. When you export via Admin, select "Image" and then "PNG" and it will export at the exact ratio you requested. Including 300 DPI. This works for me.


I'm able to print at maximum resolution with PNG, PDF is still an issue - but I find PNG to be superior to PDF anyway. Hope this helps.

Also waiting on any update about bleed visible from client side, and as well what is the latest developements regarding the hi quality output from admin ?

Also another feature required for this to be used for production printers would be the printing box is created as a spot colour which would allow automated cutting etc


Any updates on the ADMIN solution guys?

When setting up the canvas in pixels instead of mm or inches, the canvas can in some cases become too large. A4 is not big, but if that is the print area of a t-shirt, the canvas showing the shirt/mockup can still be quite large.


This can cause some functions in FPD (e.g. curved text) to not display properly. A bigger problem though, is that the file export is not set to support bigger files, and will in many cases either simply time out or download empty (0kb) files.

 

If there only was an option to set the order viewer to only show the custom designed area (the bounding box) instead of the entire canvas with the mockup pictures, this could fix a lot of these problems.

@Andreas


I agree it would be nice, but - you know that setting the canvas area to a larger area isn't a problem. I'm sure that clicking "Responsive" above the area is just fine. It works for us no problem. 


As for the timing out issue, this can be resolved by upping your memory limit in php.ini for your website. I recommend a minimum of 1024mb for WooCommerce & Wordpress. Try that and it should help.