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Etched glass

Anne — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 09:50:28 GMT

I'm trying to create an etched whisky glass.
I see a strange arrow thing on the design tool:

Anybody knows what this is?
Also: I can't find information on how to choose the style for the graphic.
(I'm sure it must be somewhere in the forum, but it does not show up in search)
For the text there does not seem to be any choice and it results in a really weird preview:

Why is the result dotted grey? It frankly looks awful.

Thank you for any insights!

Re: Etched glass

Windy — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 20:13:01 GMT

That symbol relates to how much of the design tool is taken up by the item. If you look at a greeting card, you will see that you can view an icon for front and another icon for back. But if you don't want two icons gobbling up your design tool space, you can press the symbol and that will stack front and back together. When you only have one item in your stack, as you do with this particular etched glass product, that symbol has no effect.

Re: Etched glass

Windy — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 20:15:48 GMT

If you go to Elements/Borders or Elements/Shapes you will find more symbols you can use as the graphic.

Re: Etched glass

NigelSutherland — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 06:08:32 GMT

It is "dotted grey" because it simulates the etching. Etching is different from printing.

Re: Etched glass

ColsCreations — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 06:53:35 GMT

I tried on an etched whiskey glass blank.
When adding a .png I automatically get this immediately:

However, if I add an .svg, I do not get any such choice and all colored pixels are black (transparent areas remain transparent). You only have the choice to choose black or white for the Fill and Border, where white is treated as transparent.

I tried with a bunch of different files and same thing each time - .pngs have the filter choice, .svgs didn't.

Re: Etched glass

Anne — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 11:16:05 GMT

Thanks everyone for your explanations and help, much appreciated!

Re: Etched glass

Sara_H — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 16:10:58 GMT

@Anne

if you hover over the arrows (as seen in your screen shot) it says what it'll do

Click on in and it "collapses the design area selector" (? - wut?)

It's for when you have several glasses - see it says glass 1 of 1

when you switch it to 2 glasses - it will show Glass 1 of 2 or Glass 2 of 2 so you know which glass you're working on

Click on it again to expand then you can see both glasses you're working on

Hope that made sense