What does enhanced by Zazzle mean Stamp

[kashmier]

There are little blue stamps appearing in the corner of items that I resized or something and it says 'enhanced by zazzle'  what is that all about?  Are we going to be charged for using these?

[Sara_H]

@kashmier "enhanced by zazzle" is new thing where the Design Tool automagically (with the help of ai) resizes your image that could do with being a bit larger for the product you are putting it on.

It creates an upscaled copy of your original artwork and places that on the product instead (and a copy in your image folder - it does give it a new name usually lots of numbers) and the little star in the left hand corner.

If you do have any with the little star - press the i (bottom right corner) and rename them so you'll be able to search for them in the future.

It's Zazzle's best interest that the artwork fits the product and is at the optimum size for printing and the Design Tool can now do that for you. Fantastic!

They normally announce new Design Tool features on a Friday so we have the weekend to break them lol though I've not read anywhere about this new feature yet

It would be nice to know if we are going to be charged a fee for upscaling our artwork.

I really hope not.

[Barbara]

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@Sara_H wrote:

It would be nice to know if we are going to be charged a fee for upscaling our artwork.

I really hope not.

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I'm wondering why it's even being done since we can do it ourselves, or is there more to it than just upsizing and maybe shifting.

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[Connie]

There are a lot of features in the Design Tool that we "can do ourselves," but Zazzle's trying to make it as versatile as possible so that we can do almost everything right in the design tool. 

[Sea-Change]

I'm happy to see this feature, and I think it will help customers as well.

For larger products, I start with a large size image based on the product specs or tile a pattern, but I'm a tad bit short once in a while for larger rugs and tapestries. Providing the quality of this tool's output is good, it'll save time not having to resize and reupload the image. 

[ColsCreations]

>> I'm happy to see this feature, and I think it will help customers as well. <<

I tried this out with another Designer's product that had a photo template on it and I think for this to be helpful instead of confusing to customers, it needs more work. 

I picked a big product, a 33" x 84" wedding banner with one photo template that covered most of the product. I picked one of my own tall, skinny images (524 x 1024) as the Replace image knowing it would be too small. I got this on the product page:

First off, my image is already being resized larger according to whichever Fit/Fill option the Designer used. I know what "this image is larger than its original size and ..." means but would a customer not familiar with how the Design Tool works understand why it says that?
Second " ... or make it smaller" is super confusing after already being told your image was too small to begin with.  I know it means to go into the Design Tool and scale the image down because it was automatically scaled up to fit the template, but what is a customer to make of this? I think this message needs to be reworked to somehow explain to customers what's happening to their image and that their options are to either upload a larger image, or, click to enter the Design Tool where they can reduce it back to original unpixelated size (which is going to effect the overall design if the image is now smaller than necessary to fill the template area). 

That's all you get on the product page, no option to Enhance from there. For customers to use the Enhance feature they'd have to know it exists and know to go into the Design Tool to access it.
Once I went into the Design Tool, the big blue banner about enhancing and clicking to Preview was there automatically. After clicking to Preview

The difference is pretty impressive. But it's not comparing my actual original image to the Enhanced one, it's comparing my image after it was automatically upsized to fit the template to the enhanced one. And here, you HAVE to pick one. If you simply X out of this pop-up and hit Done, it just opens this pop-up to pick one back up. So I selected the Enhanced version but hang on - still have the yellow warning symbol in the Design Tool view and when you click Done to preview on the product page

So you're back to the confusing message about making your already-too-small image even smaller and left wondering what was the point of the enhancing it to be larger than?

Obviously YMMV depending on size of product & settings for the template image and size of actual original uploaded by customer, but my take-away as things are now is that while we as Designers may understand all of this, how is a random shopper to figure all this out?

I think this is a pretty amazing addition to the Design Tool but as-is in its first draft, I'm not seeing it as being helpful to customers using template designs.

[PAZP]

I just went looking and didn't find any, yet. If it makes a new one does it remove the cover photo that we made for the original? 

[Sara_H]

@PAZP it's only kicks in when you put artwork that is too small on a new product that you are creating - it doesn't mess with products you have already published for sale (as far as I know) so it wouldn't replace cover photos either

[PAZP]

Oh, okay. Now I get it. Thank you. 

[CrazyMermaid]

Thank you so much for your explanation. I missed this whole thing. Was there an announcement? 

[SJoy]

I noticed this as well. I personally do not like it and prefer to keep full control of my images. Plus it adds a duplicate that I don't want in my images. I hope this feature has an off switch.

[Connie]

It's not like Zazzle does it automatically. They ask you if you want an enhanced version when your artwork is too small for the product. If you don't, no problem.

[Sea-Change]

Given various limitations of AI, I'm not comfortable with an algorithm that replaces files that I designed, unless I get to approve them first. If it creates two copies, that will create a mess and extra work, e.g., new covers, broken social media promotion links to fix, etc. Please, Zazzle, give us more information so we can understand what's going to happen with this "feature."

At the very least, please give us the option to opt out, if it does indeed create a new copy of or replace our files. We might have specific reasons for sizing an element a certain way, and the AI program might not understand the context.

[Sara_H]

@Sea-Change  It creates a copy of the artwork in your images not the product. This is for new products that you are creating - not already published products. No new covers/no repairing social media promotion links needed.

[Sea-Change]

Great, thanks for the clarification! I haven't seen the feature yet, so maybe there's an A/B or graduated rollout or I just haven't encountered any of my affected artwork.

[PenguinPower]

Must be an A/B rollout - or does it have limitations? I just tried to put an image I know is too small on a shower curtain as a test and did not get the option to upsize. 

[jophb]

It does give you the approval. A new window pops up and shows you the original and the replacement to which you can choose which one.  I've only had it pop up on items I tried to make bigger than they could. It was actually fairly accurate, it only removed some detail to the watercolor I did it with.  And considering the original item would have been 4" tall on a 18 x 24" sign that it needed to be full size on, it was a benefit to me.

[Sea-Change]

That's good that you can choose which image to include, i can see where it might be helpful for larger products, e.g., signs, tapestries, rugs, as long as the original has enough clarity to handle resizing. I hope Zazzle will post more info soon, but I appreciate the clarification here.

[jophb]

Actually just sold the item that this tool appeared on for the first time for me. So I'm thankful for this feature!

[Sea-Change]

That's great - thanks for sharing.

[jfran]

I ran across this new feature today in the design tool. It did ask if I wanted the feature, called "enhancement". It did not do it without my permission. It then created a new image, labeled with many numbers, in my media editor along with my original. The new image is also identified by a little blue circle with stars in it at the upper left of the image. I can delete the new image if I want to, just like my other images in the media editor. So the process seems noninvasive: you can take it or leave it. It does not harm anything. Try it in a new product and you'll see.

[Sea-Change]

Thanks for the information!

[almdrs]

Does anyone know if the "enhanced images" are bitmaps or vectors?