Blanks

A blank is the undecorated item a printshop buys and prints on: a t-shirt, a tote bag, a mug. It holds what is true of the item itself, whatever the artwork: where a print can go, and photos of the item to preview prints on.

A blank can sit in one of your workspace’s blank categories, such as T-shirts or Mugs, which the studio groups blanks by. A category also holds defaults: a print method, a resolution, a bleed and safe area, and how photos are previewed. Every one of those fields a blank leaves empty takes the category’s value, and follows it when you change the category. A blank created in a category also starts with the category’s printshop and its starting placements, copied in once.

Blanks are optional. A poster, a sign or a coaster has no separate item to model, and a template printed without a blank is perfectly valid.

One blank, every colour and size

A blank is one item regardless of colour or size. A white and a blue tee, S through XL, are one blank, because neither changes where a print can go. Each combination of its options — red in M, white in XL — is one of its variants. A blank lists its options (Color, Size) and their values in the order your shoppers see them, and a value can be kept before any variant is sold in it. A blank with no options has one variant.

A blank also names the options its photos change with, usually Color, or none (“All”). Each product photo belongs to one row of those options: the red photo shows every red size, a size added later included, and a view holds one photo per row. A blank imported from a printshop changes its photos with Color, one printshop photo per colour; you can make them change with further options too, for photos of your own.

A blank can name the options its print areas change with too, such as Size: a sweater’s XL front panel is larger than its S one. Each placement then holds one print area per size (the API’s areasVaryBy and each placement’s areas), with its own maximum and usual size, and its own bleed and safe area where they differ. The placement’s maximum is then the largest of them. A blank that already has designs or designer links names a reference row (referenceRow) first: the size its designs keep.

Deleting a variant in the studio retires it rather than removing it (the API’s retired), so an order that names it keeps working; a new order for a retired variant is refused. Edit a blank’s variants, its options and the values they take under the blank’s options tab, named after its options (Color & Size).

Placements

A placement is one spot on a blank where a print can go — a chest, a back, a sleeve. One blank has many: “front centre” and “left chest” are two placements on one garment, not two garments.

Each placement records, in the studio’s terms:

• Name — what the studio calls it, which you can rename at any time.

• Printed as — what your printshop calls it, on orders and job sheets. Left linked, it is the placement’s Name; unlink it when the printshop knows the spot by another name. A blank imported from a printshop is printed as that printshop names its placements. Where the print sits on the item — say 70 mm below the collar seam — is not set here: it is the printshop’s, kept on the position the placement is printed as. See Printshops.

• Max width and Max height — the largest area that can be printed.

• Default width and Default height — the usual print size. It must fit inside the maximum print area.

• Coverage — how a print covers the placement: within, a print of any size up to the maximum placed inside it (every placement, unless it says otherwise), or full, a print that is the whole area, edge to edge, as on an all-over-print sweater panel or a sheet of wrapping paper. A full placement has no usual size of its own: a request that names no size prints at the whole area, and one naming a smaller size is refused print_size_not_area.

• Bleed — how far ink runs past the cut line.

• Safe area — the margin important content should stay inside.

  Left empty, either one uses the blank category’s, else the workspace’s default bleed or safe area, set under Settings, and follows it when the default changes. Artwork printed with no blank uses the same defaults. A workspace that sets none prints with a 3 mm bleed and a 3 mm safe area.

• Print method — one of: digital (sheet), large format (roll), UV, DTG, DTF, sublimation, screen, pad, offset, embroidery, laser, or cut and sewn (printed on fabric panels that are then sewn into the garment). Left empty, it is the blank category’s.

• Views — the ways the placement is photographed, such as Flat or On model. Every photo of a view has the same size and one area marked where a print at the default size sits.

• Shape — where on the product a print may go, when that is not the whole rectangle: a spoon lure stamped as a teardrop with a hole for the line, a tag with a slot. It is an outline and any number of cut-outs of any shape, given as SVG path data in fractions of the print area (shape.dFrac: the outline first, then each cut-out, every subpath closed, curves allowed and arcs not), filled even-odd. Nothing is printed outside the outline or in a cut-out: the designer’s preview, the proof, mockups and the print file are all cut to it, and the designer draws it as a dashed guide. By default the product already has the shape, so the print only leaves it bare. Marked cut by the print shop (cutByPrintShop), the outline and the cut-outs go into the print file and the job ticket as the cut line, replacing the template’s cut shape, and the print keeps its bleed past it. A print of another size than the largest takes the shape at its own size. In the studio, a print area’s Shape row opens the shape editor, where the outline and cut-outs are drawn, edited point by point, or read from an uploaded SVG: its largest closed path is the outline and every closed path inside it a cut-out.

When a design names a blank and a placement, its artwork is checked against that placement. When it names a placement but no print size, it prints at the largest size of the template’s own ratio that fits the default print size.

How many placements a customer may decorate on one item — “front or back”, “any two of four” — is your shop’s rule. Pixonaut checks each pairing on its own.

Some items cannot be made with a placement left unprinted: a cut-and-sewn sweater’s sleeve is cut from its printed panel. A placement marked required (the API’s required) must have a print in every order on its blank; an order without one is refused placement_unfilled, naming the placement, and nothing is sent. A designer link on that blank must hold a side for it too, and one made without is refused the same way. A blank imported from a printshop is required where that printshop says. An optional placement may also hold a fill colour (fillColour, #rrggbb): the colour it is to be left when nobody designs it. An order that leaves it without a print is sent a flat print of that colour at the placement’s whole area, its size’s where the area changes with the size, as one of the order’s prints: the order waits for it as for a print still rendering (awaiting_prints), and its job ticket’s artwork names the colour in place of a template. An order of a size the placement has no area for is refused placement_unfilled, naming the placement, and nothing is sent.

Mockup photos

A mockup photo lets you see an artwork sitting on the product rather than on a bare rectangle. On a template’s page, under On a product, choose a blank, a placement and a photo to preview it. A placement’s photos are grouped into views: a view is one way of photographing it, such as Flat or On model, and holds several photos of the same size, for example one per colour. The print area is marked once for the view and holds for every photo in it; a photo of another size goes in a view of its own. A placement holds up to 10 views, a view up to 50 photos, and a blank up to 2,500 photos.

One photo can show several placements: a sweater photographed whole shows its front and both sleeves, a rolled roll of wrapping paper a window of its print. Such a view belongs to the blank and holds one region per placement it shows, two to six, each marked on the photo; a region may also follow a mesh of points over a curved surface, show only a window of the print (in millimetres, as a roll does, so a repeat shows at its true size), and hide the print behind a mask where the product covers it. A photo’s shading, wrap and folds are set per region. GET /v1/blanks/{id}/views/{viewId}/mockup.png draws such a view with a published template in each region, named by prints; a region with none shows its placement’s fill colour. A view of one placement is listed under that placement as before.

With no photo of the product, copy a stock view onto the blank instead: Pixonaut ships pictures of a rolled roll, a flat sheet, a sweater and a hoodie from the front and from the back, and a spoon lure, their regions marked (the hoodie’s include its hood and the hood’s lining). You say which placement each region shows, and the copy is a view of your own, edited like any other. The rolled roll and the flat sheet show a fixed window of the print, so a repeat shows at its true size.

Fitted on the photo, or drawn from a 3D render

A view says how its print sits on its photo, under How the print sits on the photo: Fitted on the photo, the default, or From a 3D render. Fitted, each print area is marked on the photo, and Bend the print lays it through a mesh that follows the product, or, as Cut shape, flat behind a shape you draw and cut to it, as a garment front is cut at its collar, armholes and hem.

From a 3D render, the view is drawn from the files a render of a 3D model of the product writes: its print map (uv.png), its shadows (multiply.png), its highlights (screen.png) and its pieces (view.json), each the size of the view’s photos. Each print area then names the piece of the model it prints on, and the print follows that piece’s seams and folds as the sewn garment does, with none of the bend tools. Such a view shows every colour of the blank on its one render, dyed in the colour’s swatch (set on the blank’s colour option), folds and light included; a colour with a photo of its own on the view shows that photo instead, and a colour with no swatch shows the render as it is. Dyeing never reaches the print file. The print is lit by the render’s shadows and highlights alone, never by the photo, and reads as ink dyed into the fabric, keeping every hue: the print method’s ink, fabric shading, wrap and folds below are a fitted view’s.

On a view fitted on its photo, the print meets the product the way ink does, by the placement’s print method. On a light fabric, an ink that soaks in (DTG, screen, sublimation, cut and sewn, digital, large format) takes the fabric’s tone: white in the design shows the fabric, and colours are tinted by it. On a dark fabric the same methods print over a white underbase and keep their own colour. DTF, embroidery, UV, pad, offset and laser sit on top, opaque, whatever the fabric. The print also loses a little contrast by method, as a matte ink does, and is softened to the photo’s own sharpness, so it is never crisper than the product around it.

The photo’s own light then carries onto the design: where the fabric folds into shadow the print darkens with it, and a highlight lifts it. Shading lights the print and never changes its colour. Each photo has a Fabric shading slider in the blank editor, from none to full; a photo shot flat and evenly lit has little to carry, and one with harsh lighting can be toned down.

On a round product — a mug, a bottle — the design can wrap round it. Wrap around the product sets how far: at full wrap the edges of the marked area are the product’s sides, and the print foreshortens toward them as it curves away. The marked area stays the print’s size at the front of the product, so a strongly wrapped print looks narrower than it. Darken toward the sides dims the print as the surface turns from the camera. A preview under the sliders shows a sample print on the photo, wrapped and shaded as previews show it. The Builder’s Preview shows the draft on the photo you picked there, wrapped the same way; the editing canvas in the Builder stays flat, since that is where a print is placed on the plate it is printed on.

On a fabric product — a t-shirt, a bag — the design can follow the fabric’s folds and creases, so a straight line in the print wavers where the cloth does. Follow the fabric’s folds sets how far, from off to full; it is off until you turn it on. The folds are read from the photo itself, so there is nothing else to upload: where a fold catches the light the print moves one way, and where it falls into shadow the other, while the print as a whole stays where you marked it and never spills past the marked area. The same preview shows it, and the Builder’s editing canvas stays unmoved for the same reason it stays flat.

A mockup is for looking at. It never reaches the print file. The designer on your storefront shows the blank’s views, in the variant the shopper picks, or your own photos when you pass them; see Embed the designer.

Deleting a blank

Deleting a blank takes it out of every list and picker, and restoring it brings it back as it was, with the same id, variants and photos. The orders placed on it keep showing its name and photos. A deleted blank cannot be edited.

A delete is refused while the blank is in use: an order on its way names it (submitted, queued, printed, or of unknown outcome), or a live designer link has a side on one of its print areas. The refusal names each one, and what clears it: the order shipping or ending, the link revoked or moved to another blank. A restore is refused while another blank has taken the name, and while the blank’s printshop is deleted: restore the printshop first.

Editing a blank

Blanks are not versioned. Change a placement once and every draft that uses the blank follows. Published template versions and committed designs are not affected.

If someone else saved the blank after you opened it, the studio tells you what changed and asks whether to keep your version or discard it.

Imported blanks

With a partner printshop connected, Browse catalogue lists the products it makes. Import as blank creates one blank with the product’s print areas and every colour and size it is sold in, with the partner’s own product photos for the colours and placements you choose. Add colours fetches photos for more colours later.

A blank imported from a printshop is bound to that printshop’s product, and only that printshop makes it. Its placements’ print areas, print method, resolution and Printed as are the printshop’s and cannot be changed, and placements cannot be added or removed; you can still rename a placement. So are the variants, and the photo size and print rectangle of each view the printshop sent. The photos are yours: add your own to any view, replace or delete any photo, and add views of your own with a print rectangle you mark. An order sends the printshop placements and print files, never a photo.

Printshop changes

Pixonaut regularly checks an imported blank against what the printshop offers today, and you can Check for printshop changes on the blank at any time. A blank can be flagged as:

• Printful has discontinued this product — the printshop has stopped making the item.
• Print area changed — a print area moved, changed or disappeared.
• Colours or sizes changed — a variant is no longer sold, is sold again, or new ones are offered. Re-sync from Printful under Variants applies them: gone variants are retired, returning ones come back under the same ref, and new ones are added without photos.

The blanks list marks a blank with a change as Needs attention.

Pixonaut reports these changes and never rewrites your blank to match. If the check itself could not run, the studio says so — “Could not check for printshop changes” — rather than showing the blank as unchanged.

Importing blanks from a CSV

To create many blanks at once, import them from a CSV file under Blanks, then Import. The import runs in the background: its blanks appear at once, marked as importing, and each becomes ready, or failed, as the import reaches it. A blank whose name you already have is skipped and never updated, so running the same file again is safe. See Import blanks from a CSV for the format.

Which printshop makes a blank

A blank has one Printshop, chosen when you create it: the one you pick, else its category’s, else your default printshop at that moment. With none of these, the blank cannot be created; if you print by hand, add a custom printshop for it. Designs made on it are ordered there, and changing your default printshop later does not change it.

A blank’s printshop never changes, an order included. To make the same product at another printshop, copy the blank to it; a failed order can then be sent to that blank. If its printshop is disconnected, the blank keeps it and its orders are refused until it is reconnected. See Printshops.