Better PDF creation would be a great addition to this plugin.

If it is to be taken seriously by the print industry, then the PDFs that are exported really need to have fonts embedded.

The whole point of an online designer is that it saves the Printer/Webstore owner time. If they have to recreate a product from scratch to send to print then its not really saving time.

Not a criticism, just my view as to where the plugin is lacking.

Overall a very, very good piece of software.

FPD Team:
If you can do all these things with the enhanced PDF Support, I would definitely buy the plugin for $99. Since I already own the plugin (payed $46), I would be happy to donate $53. This better exporting capability would be a show-stopping improvement for my business. Again, keep up the really good work guys.
-Dr. Fozdar

 

FAO: Radykal / The FPD Team.
Only three things missing from this fantastic product...

1. INDUSTRY STANDARD PDF OUTPUT.
a. Resolution must be 300dpi.
b. Layers must be flattened.
c. Transparencies must be flattened.
d. CMYK (four plate output only).
e. Fonts must be flattened, converted to paths/curves or embedded. (Paths/curves is best for most RIPS).

2. RESOLUTION CHECK FOR IMPORTED / UPLOADED IMAGES.

3. WARNING / ALERT ON RESET BUTTONS / SWITCHES.

When or if these important features are implemented, you'll have an OUTSTANDING product,
and PRICE TAG SHOULD BE INCREASED TO $99.00 - and I'll buy it :)

Keep up the good work. Kind regards, Johnny.

I 100% agree with this, more, I 10000% agree with what Paulo just wrote.

In regards to an earlier question, we are exactly doing what he describes, we remove certain layers, then export everything with factor 8 before applying a Photoshop automation that aligns, resizes and crops the picture to size (= bounding box). And actually, there should be no need to do any of this, FPD should have an option to specify the export area, resolution, layers to export and then generate a print-ready file, that should be the essence of every design tool. And obviously, there should be an option to save those per product, not just as a global setting.

Alex

Hi everybody.

This thread is very important for the professional store owner that sells personalized products, or any kind of real world manufacturing based on the client design. I leave here my two cents.

- Production ready PDF: 

• layers with embedded fonts or converted to curves

- Better cropping: 

• only export the design area where the client composes it's drawing. Ex.: drawing over a T-Shirt template. for production we only need the central area, where the design is drawn and not the entire stage
  

- Better export automation:  

• the possibility to mark layers as "Exportable", in the Product Designer. When exporting, only those layers are exported to the PDF
• the possibility to define a export bounding box in the Product Designer, and everything outside that area is clipped in the final PDF. We only need the client's composition, not the entire STAGE
• the possibility to have the export settings saved has default (DPI, SCALE FACTOR, DIMENSIONS)

If I understand this right, we all need to be able to export layered PDF files containing embedded vector and raster graphics and text.

For my application, I should be able to import the layered PDF file from the Order Viewer (from the designer) into Corel Draw with the correct sizing (pixel dimensions) giving me the ability to edit individual layers along with information regarding the size and location of each individual raster image or text box (including font size) on the canvas. Also, embedded vectors will be imported as curves, shapes, etc.

This is the dream, and, for some, a mandatory feature. In general, better PDF and image export capabilities (JPG, PNG, etc.) will make this the gold standard of product designer plugins. The front end (customer side) of this plugin is really nice, but the backend (business side) is what needs the most immediate attention. As users of your product, please let us know how we can help to speed up the process of getting these updates.

Keep up the good work!

 

 

I have the exact same problem.

Same problem with blank window when export as svg. But support said it only my problem, problem of my server

 

We need the product artwork in vector format. We have tried every possible option with PDF, PNG, etc. The closest we get is to create an SVG but it simply opens a new window in the browser with no way to get the SVG. We have used Chrome's option to output a PDF but the PDF is not the correct size and in one test a logo was slightly shifted. In another test, the font did not work.  I would like to stick with FPD if there is going to be an update soon to fix this. Does anyone know of a way to get vector artwork out of FPD? I dont care if it is PDF or SVG I just need vector art or this is not usable. 

Alexander: how do you do it then? When I try to export any type of svg files, it does not work properly at all. Do you have the same problem? Or are you able to at least export svg images/pdfs? 

Well, we print tens of thousands of custom designs based on FPD so it does work for a relatively professional business as well - but it required constant refining, we can't export them in print-ready formats but have to use PS actions to post-process the results, which is a shame.

And to be fair, the WP designers do cost way less than some of the plugins in Magento I also took into consideration, and most of those plugins to feature better backends, more automation etc. But that's not too much of an excuse not to improve the backend - if a programmer offers a Magento plugin for $500 with advanced features and he sells 100 of those, he makes a turnover of $50,000. If someone produces a WP-plugin for $40 and it sells 2000 times, the turnover reaches $80,000 - so that doesn't explain why one plugin turns out to be more advanced than the other (and there are far more Magento product designers, so the market is much more competitive).

Anyway, let's hope someone reads this and maybe even gets the idea to ask some customers who use the designer on a professional basis for input to improve on the product.

Most of these WP product designer plugins, including this one, and the one by Orion, are not professional enough to use in business. They are very hard to use or have a lot of problems or both. It is clear that the developers have little to no understanding of the printing business or they wouldn't be lacking in the features we are talking about. These plugins are relatively inexpensive, so it looks like the only way to have a legit product designer developed for a website is to hire professional developers (which is quite expensive).

 

I suggested most of those numerous times before (also had some tickets which were relatively similar to your suggestions), but it seems that the suggestions are being largely ignored. I am not sure why, I can only guess that improving the export will be relatively difficult in comparison to making the frontend look more polished.

But then again, as said before, such a plugin first and foremost must be made for us shop owners who use the plugin on a daily basis to export customer designs in order to print them - we are the customer of the software developer ;) The frontend must certainly be good enough for an unskilled customer to be used without further support and it should feature all common functions that can be found in similar design tools but that's about it, the real magic is the backend including further automation, better export features and certainly a better documentation including best pracise guidlines on how to design the marks, how to set it up in order to optimise the output quality and usability.

Alex

The plugin will greatly benefit from the following improvements:

1. Better documentation
2. Exporting PDF files with embedded text
3. Automatically reducing the size of uploaded photos for the purpose of designing a product on a product stage that will fit a computer screen, then resizing the finished product layout upon exportation.

Again, really like your product. However, big improvements need to be made.

-David

 

I'm looking to purchase this product as well, but need this feature for it to be able to work for what I am doing, as numerous others here. Is this a feature that's included in the new beta release? If not any ETA on when this will be added?

Hi there,

Can we please get an update on this? are we just waiting on the new version which will have vector output?