Creator Feedback: Aspect ratio update in the design tool

[James]

Hi creators,

You spoke (or typed) and we listened! 🧏We just announced an update to the aspect ratio behavior in the Crop tool. Jump into the design tool and give the updated Crop experience a spin. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Does this make cropping smoother for you? Let us know what you think — your feedback helps us keep improving. 

Happy designing! 

[osea]

I looked to it now. As a designer I usually upload ready photo/graphics and no need to additional adjustments, but it may be very helpful for use/fit images/graphics already used for other design/products.

I see now the resizing works perfectly mantaining aspect ratio without need of additional press of keyboard keys.  

This is good, better, following the standards and logic thinking...

[Cat]

Is there some setting that will force it to crop without resizing? Maybe my hand just isn't steady enough, but whenever I try to crop off part of the image, I end up accidentally resizing it too.

[Sara_H]

@Catdo you see the corners? Click and drag one of those (either in the aspect ratio Freeform or any other size)

there's no setting that I can find

[Cat]

@Sara_H Yeah, that's what I'm doing. But unless you're able to drag in a PERFECTLY straight line, it either enlarges the image, or it cuts off part of the side perpendicular to the one you're trying to crop. Like let's say I'm trying to crop off the left side of the image. I grab the top left corner and try to move it straight to the right. But if I accidentally drag the corner a little bit upwards, it enlarges the image - if I accidentally drag it a little bit downwards, it cuts off the top - it's just SOOOO frustrating!

Maybe if there were handles on the sides in addition to the corners it would solve my problem, because that way I could easily just crop one side without worrying about either accidentally enlarging it or cutting off part that I didn't mean to cut off! (adding bold and italics here to be sure Zazzle mods see this part.)

It's not impossible, it just requires that you have a really steady hand or that you're working with an image that has some leeway on the sides so it won't matter if you accidentally cut off a few pixels along the wrong edge. Honestly, it takes me soooo long to try to crop an image that I usually end up just uploading a cropped version so I don't have to fight with the thing.

[Sara_H]

@Cat 

I've not had that problem. Perhaps it's the browser I'm using (firefox)

Interestingly enough - if you add another image and try to crop that - the old square crop thing appears

so add an image you don't want to crop first - then crop it - ignore it and then crop the image you do want to crop and you should get the old style crop

Try it and see

*this post was brought to you by too many crops*

[Cat]

Hmmm... I'm not sure how you did that. I tried adding multiple images but they all got the same crop tool.

I dunno - part of the problem may be that I have my mouse sensitivity turned way up. I have tendonitis in my wrist (probably from too much Zazzling!) anyhow, having it set so I don't have to move my wrist very far helps keep the pain at bay, but it might be making it hard to move it one direction without accidentally moving it up or down. I suppose I could try the trackball mouse again, but that's even worse in terms of control. Maybe I just need a vacation! 🤤

[Sara_H]

@Cat 

the joys of zazzling

[Connie]

@Cat I'm not having any trouble with it resizing, when using the L-shaped handles in the crop tool. I'm using Firefox. I just tested it out, and dragged them every which way, and it kept the image the exact size, just cut off parts of it.

[Cat]

@Connie @Sara_H Ok, here's an example. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ykW7YQdXfuM

(Hope that link works - I'm not sure I uploaded that correctly, but it's the only way I could think of to share a video.)

In this example, I have an image of a sprig of leaves and I want to crop off the end of the stem so it doesn't show in the bouquet. But when I try to crop it, it resizes. Maybe my hands just aren't steady enough - I dunno, but it's just super frustrating!

[Sara_H]

@Cat 

Have you tried to crop before you rotate? Perhaps that's messing with things

[Cat]

That's a good idea. It does make it a bit easier to crop - but it's also harder to get it cropped in exactly the right place if I can't see it in its final position when I'm cropping it. So I end up doing a lot of rotate - crop - rotate - check - rotate - crop etc., Maybe I'm the only crazy person out there trying to use the crop tool this way!

[Sara_H]

@Cat 

What about masking it? eg - make either a circle/square (transparent no lines) then throwing that image in it? Might be easier to manipulate?

Sorry it's misbehaving for you

[Cat]

@Sara_H  That could work. Can you group a bunch of masked images? I've never tried that.

Honestly, what I really should do is to just combine all of the elements (flowers, leaves, bows, etc.) in Gimp and then save the whole bouquet or whatever in a separate file instead of trying to use Zazzle's design tool to do all of that. It's just that I like to be able to re-arrange all of the flowers & leaves so they work in a particular design - like so they conform around the specific text etc. rather than making the design conform around the artwork. I guess it's an imperfect universe...

[Sara_H]

@Cat 

You can put more than one image in a mask. Shift select all the images and mask - then they're all in one

[ColsCreations]

Huh! This sounds like something quite interesting to play around with. Who knew!

[Cat]

@Sara_H    OK, that's VERY interesting! I'm gonna have to play around with that and see if I can come up with something to make my life a little bit easier! Thanks for the tip!

[plumb4me]

I'm not sure if this is what you are talking about, but I can use the crop tool the same way as before and I don't have to use the L handles. I do have the "lock aspect ratio" unclicked. Hope this makes sense. 

Click on an image

Click and unclick the crop button

Then I can freeform (reshape) the image any way I want, without using the L shaped handles. 

[plumb4me]

Forgot to add after I finish reshaping my image, I click the crop button, center my image, unclick crop and done. After you're done, just remember to grab the corners of the image to move it or make it bigger or smaller.

[Cat]

OK... that's really weird. I see what you mean, you unclick it and the handles go away but you can still crop it. But it doesn't actually solve my problem because it still resizes randomly as I'm trying to crop the image. I really just want it to work like a standard crop where I can shave off one edge without any resizing.

ETA - OK, clicking and unclicking the crop tool is a red herring. That's just the behavior you get when you're trying to re-size with the aspect ratio turned off - which I totally don't get either.

Back in the good old days there were two separate tools - one to resize and another to crop. Now both tools do both things in strange and unpredictable ways. I think it's supposed to be more "intuitive", but it just confuses me to no end and leads to a lot of me cursing at the computer screen! 🙄

[plumb4me]

I understand, it gets frustrating, it doesn't work the way I want it too either. The "lock aspect ratio" is not needed anymore, so why is it still in the design area, you just grab the sides and it's automatically locked and resizes now. I remember when there was an actual ruler in the design area, who knows why that was taken away, it was very useful. 

[Cat]

The "lock aspect ratio" setting confuses me too. It does seem to change some behavior in different circumstances, but whatever it's changing, I think "lock aspect ratio" is not a very good description. And then you add the shift key in there and everything changes again! I think I need to make a chart or something (I'm only half kidding) so I can figure out what happens with the settings and shift key in all of the different tools. 

[Connie]

THANK YOU VERY MUCH! Yes, I just tried it out, and it is working great now. I can free-form crop to my heart's content! I was having so much trouble before, after the previous changes. I just have to remember to turn off the "Lock aspect ratio".

[ACR]

YES!  The "Lock aspect ratio" turned off works like a charm!  (I'm on a PC using Chrome) Thank you!!!

[Fantabuloustef]

Hi @zazzle team!

I’m working on an iPad without keyboard, and I’m happy to be able to crop now like before.
However I have now a new problem. I tried to draw a rectangle using the square shape, to make a frame around one of my designs. 
But I am unable to create something else than a square!
If I resize it, it’s locked in proportional resizing, and it drives me crazy, because I can’t unlock it.
I feel like all the latest features in the editor are regressions for iPad users, it was so perfect before, why did you do that?
Now I don’t stop discovering new problems.
If your editor is not compatible anymore with iPad, you could alert the users about that.
Don’t you make tests on all the targeted platforms before putting a new release in production ? 

[Fantabuloustef]

Update: It looks like it’s back. I don’t know if it’s because I did a few cropping and it changed something or if Zazzle team is still making updates. It’s quite destabilizing.

[windwatching]

I figured out that if you hold down shift key on desktop you can change the ratio of the square shape to a rectangle, not sure if this is the same on iPad but this was driving me crazy too.

[AlyMarie]

I use an iPad to design and I am having the same problem (can't adjust the shape elements/they are in a locked ratio). Any idea how this issue was resolved for you?

[Fantabuloustef]

Refer to my answer to DanaCh above.

[DanaCh]

Hello!  Please can You tell me if You have found out how to make a rectangle from a square shape on designer too with iPad?  I have only iPad and Apple Pencil so is a big trouble for me… I would be very grateful and thankful end happy of course!

[Fantabuloustef]

Here’s a workaround I found on my iPad. To me it’s not a completely satisfying solution and I expect a real solution from Zazzle teams to come, but I’m not stuck any more: insert a picture in the current design where you want to add a rectangle. Then crop this picture. Remove it, and come back to your rectangle. This manipulation unlocks the proportional resizing of the square shape, I have no idea why, I found it by chance. 

[igiftcenter]

I noticed a new response to resizing text also. Took me by surprise the first time I tried to simply reduce the blank space my text field created across a product. Holding down the shift key will resize the text box without resizing the text and keeps the text box ratio the same as it was.. 

[Cat]

OK. One more request. Could we please have some easy way to reset the cropping on an image? - like to get back to square one with nothing cropped.

I'm playing around with the thing to try to see if I can understand how it works, and I've somehow managed to chop off the edge of the image and there seems to be NO WAY to get it back. I was also playing around with the resize thing because it crops too, and maybe that's where I inadvertently chopped off the edge? Either way, I've been trying for 10 minutes to get the edge back with no luck - I've tried with both tools. I finally gave up and just re-inserted the image to start over (this is not an uncommon experience for me, it happens almost every time I try to use these tools.)

ETA: I think the problem is that I have these png images that are cropped to the edge of the artwork. When I try to use the cropping tool to get back to whole, I can't tell when I'm at the exact edge, and if I move the handles a little bit too far so it goes beyond the edge of the image it expands (resizes) the image which ends up cutting off a few pixels from the other edges. Then I try to fix it along the other edges and end up doing the same thing. Pretty soon the image is huge, but I still can't tell if I've got all of the edges back or not. All of this could be solved if there was some way to make the cropping tool stop resizing the image and just crop.

[Cat]

One more addendum to this thought. I have a lot of designs that use the same artwork only in different colors. I designed them that way so I could easily swap out the artwork and then the products would group together via colorways. But this system falls apart if one of the pieces of artwork is cropped, because there's no way to easily swap out the image with one that's a different color. If you use the "change image" feature the replacement image will not be cropped, and it won't align in the same position as the original image. Also, since there's no easy way to un-crop without accidentally enlarging the image, you can't just un-crop, swap, and then re-crop. The result is that it takes much longer to create new products with different colors, and it's nearly impossible to get the artwork to line up exactly, so the products don't end up grouped together. 

Not insurmountable problems, but it would sure be nice if there was some way to either swap an image and retain the cropping, or to be able to un-crop without enlarging the image. 

OK, I'll stop whining now... 😁

[AntonDesignCo]

Honestly, I hate it. My biggest complaint is that it warps the size of any text I'm trying to resize to fit a certain way. I haven't tried anything with photos, but I wouldn't be surprised if I hate it for that too. It's a complete extra step for something that was once so simple.