AH
Support Staff Member
Join Date: 3/6/2009
Posts: 7
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Posted: 1/26/2010 6:07:17 PM
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Best Practices for creating Photoshop (.psd) templates for the Print Firm Software engine
Technical Specifications
- Color format
Print Firm Software supports RGB, Grayscale, and CMYK color spaces. Color depth should be 8 or 16 bits per channel. Unfortunately we do not support the other color formats. If you have PSD template you want to open in Print Firm Software, you should convert it to one of the supported formats first.
- Extra channels
Extra channel is a color channel additional to the basis channels. For example, if you have PSD in CMYK format – the basis channels are cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and alpha (optionally). If you need to draw some ornament using gold color which cannot be produced by CMYK inks, you will use special gold inks. The markup of pixels for this gold inks will be specified via additional channel. It means that this additional channel will indicate where to print using gold inks and where not.
Unfortunately Print Firm Software does not support extra channels. If you need to open PSD containing extra channels, you need to delete them first.
- Color management
Print Firm Software supports color management. There is no limitation on using of color profiles. If you want to use PSD in CMYK format, it is highly recommended to assign correct color profile. Otherwise the quality of print output will be dramatically decreased.
- Layers
Layers properties
All designs in Adobe Photoshop consist of layers. Layer is whatever you see in the design – text, raster and so on. There are several types of layers, we will describe them below. Now lets pay attention to the options which are common for all types of layers.
Basic layer options
The basic layer options are Visible, Lock (Lock all, Lock position, Lock image pixels, Lock transparent pixels) and Fill. These properties are not supported by Print Firm Software and their values are ignored.
Print Firm Software treats all layers as visible and 100% fill.
If you need to make some layers invisible, you need to delete them from the PSD template.
If you need to make layer semi-transparent, you need to add alpha channel using Layer mask (see Layer Mask section for additional details).
Blending options
In Adobe Photoshop you can specify blending options for each layer. These options include both general blending options (blend mode, opacity and so on) and visual effects (drop shadow, inner glow, etc). Print Firm Software does not support blending options.
General blending options
Unfortunately this set of options is not supported by Print Firm Software, and there is no way to use them.
Visual effects
There is a way allowing you to use the most of visual effects. After you specified the effects and their parameters in the blending options dialog of the specific layer, you may do right click on the effects section in “Layers view” and select “Create layer”. Then visual effect will be divided into set of raster layers and they will be added to the PSD file. After that Print Firm Software will be able to parse visual effect correctly in most cases.
Layer Mask
Adobe Photoshop supports layer masks. Strictly speaking it is the same thing as alpha channel of the specific layer. In that way you are able to specify alpha channel for each layer separately.
Print Firm Software does not support layer masks. But there is a workaround – you can do right click on layer mask in “Layers view” and select “Apply Layer Mask”, after that the mask will be applied to the layer and Print Firm Software will extract it correctly.
Vector Mask
Adobe Photoshop allows to specify vector masks for layers. Vector mask is the thing similar to layer mask described above. The main difference is that vector mask is given in curves whereas layer mask is raster information. You may convert vector mask to layer mask and then handle it as described above. To make this conversion you need to do right click on the vector mask in “Layers view” and select “Rasterize Vector Mask”.
Layer types
The following types of layers are supported on Adobe Photoshop: fill or adjustment layers, raster layers, text layers, and sets.
Raster layers
Raster layers are the basis in Adobe Photoshop. They contain graphics information forming the design templates. This type of layers is supported by Print Firm Software with the limitation of layer properties described before (basic layer properties, blending options, etc).
Sets
Sets are used to unify several layers in one set. Print Firm Software supports this type of layers and allows extracting names of sets.
Text layers
Text layers are used to represent textual information in design templates. Adobe Photoshop provides a rich text-related functionality. In general Adobe Photoshop uses multi-line string model for text layers. It means the following – user may have multi-line text in a single text layer. Unfortunately Print Firm Software does not support multi-line text layers. If you need to add multi-line text string, you need to add a single text layer for each single line.
Print Firm Software supports the following text parameters:
Font name (only the fonts installed on server will be supported, otherwise the default font (Arial) will be used to render string);Style: bold, italic, etc.Font size;Color;Faux bold;Faux italic;Underline;Values of the other parameters will be ignored by Print Firm Software while rendering text strings.
Fill or adjustment layers
Adjustment layers and fill layers allow you to adjust other layer(s)—such as modify the levels (values), the hue (colors), and so forth—or add a fill to other layer(s)—such as a solid color, gradient, and so forth—respectively.
Print Firm Software does not support this type of layers.
- Some ideas how to create templates supported by Print Firm Software
Place holders
Suppose you are working on business card design and you need to add personal information: address, email, phone, and so on.
Suppose you insert the phone with the following text layer: “Phone: [add your phone number here]”. When users will edit this template in Print Firm Software and insert their personal information, they will have to edit string “Phone: [add your phone number here]”, it is not good practice. It would be better if you separate place holder (“[add your phone number here]”) into single text layer and let users to edit this layer.
Merge and rasterize all static layers
When you create PSD template for Print Firm Software you need to follow the rule: the amount of layers should be minimum. Lets describe this approach with an example.
Suppose the company prepares template of business card for the staff. Employers of the company need to specify personal information only like name, last name, job title, phone number, and email. The template consists of the following elements:
Background image;Company logo;Company name;“[name]” place holder;“[last name]” place holder;“[job title]” placeholder;“Telephone:” string;“[telephone number]” place holder;“Email:” string;“[email]” placeholder; That makes 10 layers. The customer will have to scroll layers view in Print Firm Software and search for which layers they should fill in (if they are using the text only design tool)
Lets rearrange the design. The static information of the template is: background image, company logo, company name, “Telephone:” string, “Email:” string. Lets merge them all in one raster layer. After that, the customer will see one raster layer with non-editable information and place holders “[name]”, “[last name]”, “[job title]”, “[telephone number]”, and “[email]” needed to be filled in. It is 6 layers and 5 of them should be edited; which is much simpler for the customer.
To merge layers you should select them in “Layers view”, do right click on one of them and select “Merge Layers”.
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