Feedback for New Design Tool update: Crop Mode

[James]

Hi Creators, 

We have announced an exciting new update to your design tool. Take a look and tell us what you think! 

Thanks! 

[Cat]

I personally found it to be super confusing because I didn't understand that it was like a box within a box, so I kept grabbing the wrong set of handles and resizing it instead of cropping. Maybe other folks are more clever than I am, but I had to have it explained to me before I could make it do anything at all! Got so frustrated the first time I tried that I gave up and just cropped the image myself and then reloaded it. Not sure if I'm just dense or what. 

[KC]

I've been struggling with the photoshop canvas size adjustment that works similar to this through YEARS of daily use. It literally never starts to make sense for me. Especially without a VERY clear distinction about what will be shown vs what will be cropped after you are done. It's kind of like driving without headlights right now.

[Gail_K]

I have had a play with it and so far I really like it. I usually crop my images to center the subject before uploading so that they fill correctly when being replaced by the customer. I have been using the mask feature to get square images. I can see how this new tool now makes it easier to do without needing to crop images before uploading. It can now fill the image to the chosen aspect ratio rather than the original photo itself. I can still use a mask with it if I want to get rounded corners or a circle shape. Thank you Zazzle.

[ColsCreations]

I really don't like to sound disrespectful of all the work that went into this feature, but it's confusing.

It took some playing around with different images to figure out that the outer box controls the actual image whereas the inner box is just for selecting the portion of that adjusted image you want to keep.

My instinct is to move the inner box over the area of the image I want to keep but instead you have to move the image underneath it (the outer box)  until what you see in the inner box is what you want. This will never not be confusing to me, especially since this means a big portion of the image ends up off the viewable canvas while you're trying to get the area you want under the inner box.

The biggest issue though is that there is no "revert". Once you've messed around with both box sizes and positioning both and confirmed the crop, there is no getting back to the original size and shape of your image. You would think that "Undo" would undo the entire crop action but it doesn't, it just takes you back one little adjustment within the crop action at a time. If you want to get back to your original uncropped, unresized image you have to either figure out how to properly adjust both sets of handles again within the crop tool, or just delete and reupload. Deleting and re-adding was way easier for me.

I think big advancements like this are harder on Creators (who are used to how things work in both the design tool and their graphics program of choice) then they are on the average customer (who may have zero experience with graphic tools and are therefore willing to submit to more of a learning curve) but either way, yes please to a one-click Revert option.

[tiffjamaica]

I second a revert option.  I think the new crop tool will be great for photos, but for my artwork, it's cumbersome. I create my own graphics, and I used to save them all into one file where I could use the old tool to select the parts I wanted (this saved a lot of time in my work flow).  I'm sure I'll learn the new crop tool over time, but for now it's a headache - a revert button would help immensely, esp while I'm in this learning phase.

[Connie]

"My instinct is to move the inner box over the area of the image I want to keep but instead you have to move the image underneath it (the outer box) until what you see in the inner box is what you want." For some reason, I get confused by this, even though that's the way Adobe Lightroom works. (I get confused there, too!)

[Cat]

OK, I muddled around with this a bit more and uncovered at least part of the source of my confusion. There are now two different ways to resize and crop an image, and they work totally differently.

If I just click on a picture and move the handles (with the lock aspect ratio set to off) it resizes and crops in a somewhat mysterious way that I still don't fully understand. But if I click on the crop tool, I get the box within a box thing - which both resizes and crops but using the box within a box thing. 

I guess I just think it would be easier to understand if there was one system for resizing and a different system for cropping instead of making both systems do both things in different ways. 

[Lea]

I like it! And I'm not usually one who likes change but I really think it's a solid improvement!
Curious if there's anything in the works to improve the customer side of things with regards to handling photos? Probably the most frequent legitimate customer message I get is about frustrations with cropping and placement of photos.

[Cat]

Agree about the customer side of things. I think it would be super helpful if there was a popup on the product page that automatically appeared when they replaced the template image with their own, and that allowed them to position their image within the template space. That way they wouldn't have to enter the full design tool to make adjustments, and I think it would be a lot easier for them.

[chuamishael]

confusing croping, Maybe give us an image transparency feature. or auto background remover. that will be awesome. 😃

[OrchardBerry]

Deleted

[LMGildersleeve]

I'm having no problem with it but agree there should be a "back to original" option. Even if it's a shortcut key, this would be nice to have.

[Connie]

It's a good thing there's a video- I never even SAW those outer corners that are used to zoom in or out! I only ever used the big white corners that crop off the unwanted parts.

Overall, I like this new tool, and think it's very easy to use with a little practice. It's nice having everything in one window so I can see exactly where to crop the image, instead of the old way where we had to jump in and out of the crop tool after fiddling with it. And the set aspect ratios are very convenient as well to make sure we get a perfect square. It would be nice if we could have a few more sizes, though, especially 5x7.

[plumb4me]

I love it and didn't find it confusing. It's now quick, easy and precise to crop an image, saves me alot of time.

[Ibrahim-Abdalla]

thanks for this update 

[Echo]

I'm having trouble getting it to work properly. I'm not sure if it's a bug or just me. Let's say I have a 3:4 image and I only want to crop out a portion at the bottom. I ensure that the part I want is inside the crop window and the unwanted part at the bottom is outside of it. It looks fine in the editor, but once I exit and change the image on the product page, it gets messed up. When I return to the editor to see what happened, I find that the crop window has shifted. Instead of just cropping out the bottom, it moved to the center of the image and cropped out some from the top and bottom.

[ShadoWind]

I am finding this tool a little annoying to be honest. I don't see any double box on my computer...is there still a double box? Its not showing up for me. I get a resize if I grab the corners and a crop if I grab the sides of the bounding box. I don't know if that is due to the browser I'm using or what but thats how it functions on my end. I didn't see the announcement right away so I didn't even realize this was a new "feature" i just thought it was a glitch.... when I grab the wrong handles now when I go to resize like I  would normally do, now it crops half the time instead, so I have to re-condition my brain out of the  habit of grabbing the box willy nilly to re-size things... I'm sure it must be useful in some respects but at the moment my brain is just annoyed by it as mostly my images are cropped as intended when I upload them for most products already as that is my habit...I'm sure I will get used to it. But I sort of wish there was a tool that you could use to click and turn the crop feature on or off.