Quick Start

Designer Side

This is the Printess Designer Side Interface. This mode is where Templates are designed and configured for further personalization by the Buyer.

Buyer Side

With Printess it is easy to create a powerful and intuitive Buyer Side experience while designing a document, without coding! The Buyer Side is what the end customer will use to configure and personalize their documents. To check the behavior of the Buyer Side, you can easily switch between the Designer and Buyer Side views by clicking the Shopping Basket icon, located on the right of the top menu bar.

You can Zoom with keyboard shortcuts CTRL + and CTRL -, your mouse CTRL + scroll wheel, or by simply pinching on the trackpad.

Read our in-depth chapter about the Buyer Side here!

File Dialogue

After login, Printess will start the File Dialogue. Here you can create and manage Templates as well as open any previously created Templates for editing.

The File Dialogue opens with the Recently Saved Templates tab on the left preselected. This provides you with easy access to your most recent work.

But first, let’s switch to the Open tab and have a look at some additional Printess management options.

Templates are organized into folders with the current user being the uppermost folder. You can create, rename, or delete folders using the respective icons on the top left toolbar.

The Templates saved inside the currently selected folder are shown in the center. Select a Template to open, copy, or delete it. Once a Template is selected, the pages saved within the documents will be previewed on the right.

You can search for previously created Templates with the search box, located on the top menu bar - just right of the Printess logo. Any matching search results are shown underneath the search box. Clicking on a Template will display a path preview to the right where you may open any saved document from within the Template.

A Template can also be opened directly from the search results.

To close the File Dialogue, just click on the X in the top right of the window.

On the top left, you will see the currently logged-in user. Here you can also check out our many available premade Templates. From Photo Products to Cards & Invitations, all the resources within these example Templates are free to use.

Creating a New Template

In the New tab directly under the user icon, you can select the Template Type, page size, and create a new Template. When selecting page size from the drop-down don’t worry, this can be easily changed at any point later on with the Template.

Alternatively, you may also select one of our pre-built example Templates as the basis for a new document.

Either way, when a new Template is created the File Dialogue will close and the Editor opens up in Designer Side.

Top Menu Bar

Undo Redo
On the left side of the top menu bar, you can Undo/Redo previous operations. This may also be done by keyboard with CTRL-Z for Undo and CTRL-Shift-Z for Redo.

Template

In the center of the top menu bar, Printess displays the name of the currently opened Template (a new Template will be displayed as [Unsaved Template]). If a Template from another user is opened you will see the user of origin in a circle to the left of the Template name.

By clicking on the Cloud icon, the Template Context menu will open as a drop-down.

Template Context Menu

This menu contains the following actions:

• New Template: Creates a new Template (reopens the File Dialogue).
• Open Template: Opens another Template (reopens the File Dialogue).
• Open Previous Version: Opens a menu with all previous Draft and Published versions of the current Template. When selected, the previous Template version will open in a new browser tab.

Note: Don’t continue working in this Editor, it is for checking past work and any changes made will be overwritten on save unless the document is saved as a new Template.

• Save: Saves the current Template.
• Save As: Specifies a folder and saves a copy of the Template under a new name.
• Rename: Renames the current Template.
• Save & Publish: Saves the current Template as a draft and creates a published version of the Template. User rights are required to publish Templates and can be enabled or disabled depending on your role.
• Overwrite Draft: Overwrites the current draft version. This is only available if the user is editing a previously published version.
• Publish Snippets: This will publish all Snippets contained in a Template to the user’s account, allowing them to be easily accessed and/or used in any other Templates. Publishing Snippets will also automatically save the Template.
• Render Output File(s): Opens the print dialogue which allows the creation of print-ready files from your current Template.
• Import IDML zip package: Allows you to import Adobe InDesign documents to Printess in IDML format.
• Test-Link / Embed: Opens the API-Tokens dialogue. This allows users to get an embed code for the current Template or a Buyer Side Test-Link to the current Template for sharing.

Settings Menu

The Settings Menu (located on the right of the top menu bar) gives you control over various important Template-wide settings:

Show Smart Guides: Enables or disables the Smart Guide positioning aid. This useful aid can snap frames to edges or maintain a user-set distance to other frames as you move them around.

Show Grid Lines: This displays a grid onto which all frame positions and sizes will snap whenever you move or scale frames.

Grid Gap-Size (actual): Sets the size of the grid.

Show Layer Matrix: This opens the Layer Matrix settings on the bottom of the window. Learn more about Layer Matrix here.

Show Database: This opens the Add Database option at the bottom of the window. Here you can load data from a Google Sheets Share-Link.

Show Styles: This activates small label tags for all frames that have a Style. Multi Line texts will also show labels for paragraph and character Styles.

Show Exchange IDs: Shows labels for Exchange IDs (used for content persistence when changing layout Snippets).

Show UI Hints: This enables or disables UI hints.

Search in Global Snippets: This is a useful feature for multi-user scenarios where a separate global account is used to publish all Templates and Snippets stored within the user’s eCommerce/Shop system. To see all published Snippets in this type of global account while not logged in, enable this option.

Buyer View Appearance: Opens the Buyer View Appearance settings menu which lets you fine-tune various Buyer Side UI elements with powerful customization options.

Template Type (__): Shows the current Template Type. Selecting this will open the Template Type menu where you can merge Resource Libraries, add Dropshipper info, or change between Design, Library,and Base Templates.

Template Preferences

Show Page Thumbnails:
This enables or disables the creation of thumbnails for the Template - This can save time when working with large documents.

Show Frame Borders:
If switched on, all frames will have visible borders on the Design Side. This is especially helpful for adjusting text frame layouts where the border is normally not visible.

Frame Context Menu

Whenever a frame or multiple frames are selected, right clicking on them will open the Frame Context menu.

With the Frame Context menu, frames can be reordered to the front or back, the spacing between them changed, spacing relative to the page can be set, or they can be aligned.
Read more about arranging and alignment here.

You can also copy and paste frames here.

Pro Tip: In Printess, frames can be effortlessly copied between different documents and Templates. When a frame is copied it will automatically add its resources (images, fonts, and colors) to the document or Template it is copied to.

Frames can also be grouped together which is quite important for the Buyer Side.
Read more about Buyer Side Grouping here.

Set as Paste Board allows you to select a frame and define the dimensions of the Paste Board.
Read more about the Paste Board and this function here.

Document Context Menu

With Printess one Template can contain several documents serving different purposes. If you want to create special output layouts, previews, or product thumbnails Printess helps make this fun and easy by allowing for separate documents.

Pro Tip: Sub documents make it a breeze to replicate one central design across all documents in a Template. This lets you avoid maintaining graphics across several documents!

To do so, just right-click on a document name in the title bar to open the Document Context menu.

Here you can set the document type:

• Editable when active this document gets part of the buyer side configuration. Depending on the Buyer Side Appearance settings it will appear in Tab- or Icon-Navigation.
• Preview: If selected the document represents a preview for the product which is shown at the end of all buyer configurations. You can setup several different previews in one Template. Preview pages can only be zoomed and panned. No items can be selected.
• Production: Tells Printess this is a document that should be printed once a Template is produced. There can be multiple production documents within one template (e.g. if you have a print document + an additional engraving document).
• Template Thumbnail: Tells Printess to use this document to create the Template thumbnail for our file dialogue and the shop system.
• Sticker Snippet: Tells Printess that this is a special Sticker Snippet document. Once this is selected you can publish the Snippets and let buyers use them for their creations. (Read more.)
• Layout Snippet: Marks the document as a Layout Snippet, which is a page design block that can be used across multiple products. (Read more.)
• Is Merge Target Sets this document as a Merge Target in Multi-Document merge scenarios. (Read more.)

Merge Pages:
When a Template document is merged with another document the page content of the merged document will be incorporated into the target document. Pages that do not exist in the master document will not be added.

For more complex Templates, it may be beneficial to merge multiple documents in one merge. To enable this feature you must:

1. Execute the merge without naming a document.
2. The target (master) Template will need to have at least one additional merge target document with Is Merge Target switched on, as shown below (in addition to the primary document, which is always marked).

The order of merging is determined by the order of documents in both the source and target Template. If there are more merge target documents then source documents Printess will simply loop over the source documents and repeat merging for all defined merge targets.

When initially merging documents there is the option of merging designs as layout Snippets (so that they get removed later on if the Buyer switches the layout). This is controlled by the mergeMode property. Read more here.

• Get Size from Form Field: This sets the document to a variable size controlled by the DOCUMENT_SIZE Form Field. (Read more)

In this same menu you can also rename, duplicate, or copy paste any document into another Template!

Icons beside the document name will also indicate these and other properties of the document.

From left to right: is editable, price group set, gets size from Form Field, is Template thumbnail, is merge target.

Print Dialogue

The Create Print Files Dialogue is used to define the render settings for when a Buyer selects “Add to Basket”. To open this menu, select Render Output File(s) from the Template Context Menu.

• Output Type: Selects the file type to be rendered (pdf,png,jpg,tif).

• Dpi: Sets DPI for the rendered document. The defualt drop-down menu values are 24, 96, and 300 but custom values may also be entered.

• Skip Default Images: Selecting this option will not render any default images on the production document.

• Spot Colors: Lets you select between outputting spot colors or outputting the set replacement color.

• Output Layers: Outputs a pdf with layers. All layers from your Printess production documents will appear as layers in the output PDF.

• Output Device CMYK: Will output all cmyk colors as device colors without profiles. CMYK images will also output in device color mode and included profiles will get ignored.

• Output Lineraized Pdf: Renders a simplified PDF file type that removes Form XObjects. This option is useful if you want to import the PDF into old fashioned PDF readers such as CorelDRAW.

• Output Proof Pdf: Renders the document(s) with a “Proof” watermark overlayed on top.

Render Production File(s): Selecting this will render a production file with the options above.

Save: Saves your production render settings.

Open SaveToken: This option is available on the Buyer Side Print Dialogue. To open this menu and access the Open SaveToken feature, select Add to Basket while on the Buyer Side.

Selecting this will open the current “Buyer-State” of the Template on the Designer Side in a new browser tab. To work with this Template, it must be saved under a new name and reopened from the File Dialogue, or else the original will be overwritten.

Note: Don’t continue working in this Editor, it is for checking work and any changes made will be overwritten on save unless the document is saved as a new Template.

Resources Panel

The Resources Panel tab area contains most of the resources used in a Template. In addition to images, fonts, and colors there are also special Printess resources such as Styles and Form Fields.

Learn more about the Resources Panel!

Frame Features Panel

The Features Panel contains all of your tools and settings for creating and manipulating layout elements and Buyer Side configurations.

Learn more about Frame Features here!

Each frame can have multiple frame features. A frame feature may be an image, text, text on a path, shape, or sub document. These various frame features can be integrated within a single frame, providing users with powerful creative combinations.

Example: The frame below contains a shape, an image, a text, and a path text. As you can see, the text flows through the heart shape, the image is masked into the shape of a heart, and the path text follows the border around the left side of the heart.

Auto Save (Don’t Panic!)

As you edit a document, Printess constantly auto-saves any changes in the browser storage. So if you happen to accidentally close the browser, or if a fatal error occurs, don’t panic because in most cases a backup exists. This is true even with new and unsaved documents.

To recover an unsaved document, you just need to open the Editor and close the initial File Dialogue by clicking either the X to the right or the arrow to the left. This returns you directly to your unsaved document, in the state you left it.

For this to work, you need to open the same browser on the same device where the document was last edited, within 24 hours.

Additionally, all previously saved documents will retain their last saved state within the same browser. To access the last saved state just open the document again. If changes are stored, a popup dialogue will appear informing you that unsaved changes exist.

If OK is selected the local, auto-saved version is loaded. Selecting Cancel will load the most recent saved version from the server.

Do not press Cancel if the changes might be important! This will load the most recently saved version and overwrite any local changes. Just select OK and you can still reload the document again at any time if you would prefer the most recently saved version.

Scope Conflicts

If you load a document that is already open in another tab within the same browser, Printess will ask you to close the current tab or browser window to avoid any conflicts within the local backup.

The solution is to simply close the other browser or tab before opening.