Problem with Resizing Feature

[Es]

Hi. I have a lot of products where people can replace the template logo with their logo. I tried doing it myself and the uploaded logo was HUGE compared to the template. Had to go into the design tool to fix it. I am worried that my customers don't know how to use the design tool and that they have to hold down SHIFT to resize the image. I am worried that I may be losing sales because of this. Can we go back to the old resize tool where you don't have to hold down shift and it scales it proportionately.

Any other votes for the old resize tool? I didn't think cropping it was a big deal when we had to do it manually and the new tool just makes it more complicated for both designers and customers.

[Cat]

I'm not a big fan of the new resizing tool either, I think it's super confusing to have the sizing and cropping all mixed together, plus there's a separate cropping tool so I don't understand why the re-sizing tool has to crop too!

I think part of my frustration is that the "lock aspect ratio" setting isn't a good description of what that setting does. If you have it set off, it crops the image - but it doesn't actually change the aspect ratio of the image itself like you'd think (it doesn't stretch the image) - it just changes the aspect ratio of the box that the image is in. So I can never remember which way to set the thing so that it will just resize and not crop, and I always have to re-do things about a zillion times - takes me twice as long as it used to. Grrrr

[PAZP]

 I agree "...I think it's super confusing to have the sizing and cropping all mixed together, plus there's a separate cropping tool so I don't understand why the re-sizing tool has to crop too!"

[ColsCreations]

I went to one of your Recently Created business cards with a large rectangular logo placeholder in the center and Replaced with various images of different size/shapes. My first impression was that the template is set to None rather than Fit or FIll as the images aren't being restrained to just the logo template image area. You need to be sure to use Fit or Fill (I believe Fill is recommended by Z now).

But then as I played around more I realized something extra wonky was happening that would point to a major glitch with the Replace option, but I can't duplicate the problem with one of my own products set to Fill. So I don't know, the issue might stem from using None instead of Fit or FIll but either way it's a bad glitch.

So, using this image which is 1140 x 315 as example:

From the product page of your business card I used Replace, selected the above image, and got this:

You can see it's already not being constrained to the logo placeholder image area (which could be due to not using Fit or Fill).

Then I started from scratch (meaning I opened the product page again and declined the pop-up to continue from the previous state), used Replace to select a different image, then used Replace a second time to select this image, and got this:

My image is now giant, zoomed-in and filling almost the entire card. The more I used Replaced, the larger and more zoomed the image got. Here's how it looked after starting from scratch and being the 4th or 5th time I Replaced with different images:

This was all strictly from using Replace from the Personalize menu on the product page, never went into the Design Tool. So clearly there is an issue here if customers are trying out different images and it keeps getting progressively larger each time. Even it it only happens with templates set to None, its still a pretty bizarre thing that shouldn't be happening.

It would probably help a lot if you could post an example or two and specify what they are set to (Fit, Fill or None) as noone but the designer can see that info.

[Es]

I just noticed that fit and fill under the template module. Wow never noticed that before. That's a game changer. Thanks!

[ColsCreations]

Yes, which you select there is super important as to how the customer's uploaded photo comes out the other end in the design.

Ideally, if the "correct" option for the product/design is selected, the customer won't need to enter the Design Tool where they're faced with the oddly behaving crop/resize action.

[Sea-Change]

I'm sorry I don't have a suggestion for this specific problem, but I do agree about the tool being difficult! I often have to Undo resizing or cropping and start over. In theory, the functionality seems interesting, but I feel like I had far more control with the previous tool.

I also accidentally clipped an image slightly with it,  because the tool was cropping while I was trying to resize. I didn't discover it until after I published the product, so I had to recreate the product, but at least I caught it before I promoted it or had any sales.

[Cat]

Ha! I've done the same thing - inadvertently cropped an image when I was trying to resize it. I think I caught it before I published... but who knows! Maybe there are others that I've bungled and haven't caught yet. 

I guess one man's "intuitive" is another man's head scratcher, but I think this "feature" makes things needlessly difficult. Can't imagine a customer trying to figure it out!

[Es]

When I put "fit" on the logo box it makes it way too big, it makes the logo like double the size and fill makes it take up the whole space of the business card. It's a mess any way you slice it.

[Connie]

@EsYou must have a glitch then- Fit is the right choice to use for logos, because it's SUPPOSED to fit their whole logo in the space that your sample logo is in. I tried it on one of my products, and it works fine. Maybe repost the product as a new product, and see if it works correctly? Sometimes there's random inexplicable bugs that hop into our products. I had a logo T-shirt once, with the logo repeated on the front and back, and all of a sudden the template got cut up into several different pieces! So when the customer tried to replace it with their own logo, it was putting separate pieces of it into the template areas, instead of the whole logo! I have no idea how THAT could POSSIBLY have happened!

[ColsCreations]

Does anyone know if changing the Fit/Fill/None option is an allowable edit for those with the Replace Product ability?

[Marcia]

@ColsCreations yes, you can absolutely do that. I screwed up a number of card templates a few years ago & one of the 1st things I did when I was granted access to "replace product" was to fix them.

[Cat]

@ColsCreations Pretty sure it is. I've changed some of mine from none to fill using the replace product thing, but I also made a few other tweaks at the same time like making some text into templates where it wasn't previously. But none of the alterations changed the way the thing looked, just the way it worked, and they were all accepted.

[Connie]

I'm used to holding down the shift key to constrain proportions, from using Photoshop so long, but even i occasionally forget and accidentally crop rather than resize! But overall, I do like the new tool better. It is SO much easier to crop photos to fit in particular spots on Christmas cards, for example. Before, I'd have to jump in and out of the crop tool to get it cropped just right!

[Cat]

@Connie I'm not familiar with this shift key trick. So it basically does the same thing as turning on the "lock aspect ratio" setting?

[Es]

I would like to hear back from Zazzle on this. This is a thread I started earlier:

Problem with Resizing Feature - Zazzle

I don't think its intuitive to press the shift key while resizing to maintain proportions. I'm sure many customers don't know how to do this and just abandon products because they can't get their images right with the new resizing tools and I'm sure their images are being accidently cropped instead of resized.

[Mark]

Hey @Es,

Thank you for sharing your opinion on this. I will be happy to let the team know.