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Printlane Documentation

website·Indexed 34 days ago

https://help.printlane.com/

Documentation for Printlane, a product designer tool for online stores. Includes guides on using Printlane Studio to create product templates with layers and bleed margins, managing customer designs and artwork, and integrating the designer via plain JavaScript or plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce, and Ecwid. Also provides technical reference for the Printlane API, covering media, template, design, and order endpoints.

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What's inside Printlane

  1. Overview of Areas in product templates

    Areas are designated sections within a product template used to control how layers and images behave. They are primarily used to:

    • Determine where a layer is visible (clipping/masking).
    • Change the position of a layer.
    • Automatically scale loaded images to fit or fill a specific space.
    • Trigger warnings or errors when an uploaded image does not fill the required area.

    To manage areas, navigate to the 3. Areas tab when adding or editing a template.

  2. Overview of Printlane Order API

    The Order endpoints allow applications to push order data to Printlane so that designs can be accessed by order. Printlane acts as a hub for displaying this data; to retrieve orders, you must query your own application.

    Critical Constraints:

    • GDPR Compliance: Only orders containing designs may be stored. Skip orders without designs.
    • Data Consistency: All endpoints (create, update, delete) must be implemented to ensure Printlane data matches the source application.
    • Reliability: Implement retry behavior for API calls. A successful request must return a status code in the 2xx range (e.g., 200 or 201).

  4. Locate a customer's design from an Ecwid order

    Customized orders contain a design reference (e.g., 1.03dc0b02-8431-4ac8-9bfa-f32d279554d5). The number before the dot is the design ID.

    To find the design:

    1. Open the designs overview in Printlane Studio.
    2. Enter the design ID in the Search by ID filter.
    3. Click Search.

    Alternatively, you can view all Ecwid orders containing design references in the Printlane Studio orders overview.

  5. Understand the PrintLane Design object structure

    The Design object represents a customer-created design and contains metadata about the product, the shop, and the specific visual elements (views) that make up the design. Each design includes a unique _id, a token for identification, and a list of views which contain the actual layout elements, areas, and export configurations.
    {
    "_id": "6351597b892e3ac9713c962e",
    "name": "iPhone Case",
    "shop": "589adada754c20089ed6cfd8",
    "productId": "iphone-case-demo",
    "views": [
        {
            "id": "front",
            "name": { "en": "Front" },
            "elements": [
                {
                    "id": "picture-2",
                    "type": "picture",
                    "positionX": 572.5553573460255,
                    "positionY": 976.2286960046268,
                    "value": {
                        "_id": "63515977f5711aff572bc75a",
                        "originalname": "background.jpg",
                        "token": "070b3838-9232-4b26-ad33-ba2e26497887"
                    }
                }
            ],
            "export": {
                "dpi": 300,
                "type": "pdf"
            }
        }
    ],
    "token": "b79c4175-b833-48d5-9c85-5a65344c911f"
}

  6. Customize Printlane designer via Store settings

    Store settings allow you to customize various aspects of the designer for your store, such as modifying the text displayed on the 'Add to Cart' button. To access these settings, use the navigation menu on the left-hand side of the administration interface.

  8. Implement Printlane Designer for product personalization

    Printlane Designer is a plugin for online stores that allows customers to create custom designs for specific products. When enabled for a product, the standard 'Add to cart' button on the product detail page is replaced by a 'Personalize' button. This button launches the Designer interface, allowing customers to create their design before adding the personalized product to their shopping cart.

  9. Manage production files and templates in Printlane Studio

    Printlane Studio is the administrative hub used to manage designable products and customer output. Key capabilities include:

    • Order Fulfillment: Download print-ready production files for designs created by customers.
    • Template Management: Create and manage templates that define Designer options, such as text fields or file upload areas.
    • Asset Management: Manage the library of artwork and fonts available for customers to use within the Designer.

  10. Understand default color handling in Printlane Studio

    By default, Printlane Studio stores colors in the web-friendly sRGB format, which is the standard for digital displays and web browsers. Color values are displayed in hexadecimal format. Colors can be defined in text layers, background layers, artwork layers, and color palettes using the color picker (adjusting hue, saturation, and lightness).

  12. Enable the Printlane Designer for Ecwid products

    To activate the Printlane Designer on a product, you must link a unique Template ID from Printlane Studio to the product in Ecwid.

    1. Get the Template ID: In Printlane Studio, go to the templates overview, edit a template, and copy the Template ID.
    2. Link to Product: In the Ecwid product editor, go to the Attributes tab and enter the Template ID into the Printlane attribute field. If the attribute is missing, use Manage Attributes to add it.

    Critical Requirements for Activation:

    • The Printlane attribute must be set to Show. If set to 'Do not show', the Designer will not activate.
    • Product attributes must be visible on the product page. In the Ecwid back office, go to Design > Sidebar and ensure Product details / Attributes is enabled.