After setting the dimensions of your template, you can add areas to your template.
What are areas?
Areas are sections in the template that can be used to:
determine where a layer is visible
change the position of a layer
scale loaded images to fit or fill the area
inform the user when an image does not fill the area
To get started, navigate to the tab 3. Areas when adding or editing a template.
Create a rectangular area
To create a rectangular area, follow these steps:
Click and hold your mouse button and start drawing the area (or click on the button Add area and choose Rectangle)
Change the position and dimensions of the area with your mouse or by clicking the edit button
Optionally give the area a name for easy reference in your template
Use an area to restrict the visiblity of a layer
A common use case for areas is limiting a layer’s visibility. This is useful when you want the full product to be visible in the designer, but restrict customization to a specific area.
Navigate to tab 4. Preview and click on the button with the pencil icon next to a layer. Open the Position tab and select an area in the Limit visibility dropdown:
Create a mask area
In the example above, the area does not cover the entire case. If you want customers to design the entire case, you need to take into account the rounded corners and the cut-out of the camera in the smartphone case.
For such specific forms or cutouts you can work with mask areas. They allow you to exactly decide what will be visible and what won't, by uploading an image.
This works just like a Layer Mask in Photoshop: where the image is fully transparent, content won't be shown. Take a look at the example video to see how you can create such an area so the entire case can be designed:
Use an area to automatically scale a picture to fit or fill
For picture and artwork layers, you can configure that the uploaded picture or the selected artwork is automatically scaled to match the dimensions of an area.
To do this, edit a layer and navigate to the tab Size. You can configure if the layer must fit in or fill an area. This allows you to directly scale the chosen graphic so it either fills (useful for backgrounds) or fits (useful for logos).
Use an area to warn the user about a image's size
You can also use an area to ensure that an image fills the entire area, or at least show a warning.
By default, picture or artwork layers don't have any size requirement, but it can be useful to warn the user that the image better fills a specific area. If you want to prevent users from submitting a design in which the image does not fill a specific area, you can configure that an error must be shown.
To do this, edit a layer and navigate to the tab Size. Choose in the Size requirement dropdown to Warn or Show an error if the image does not fill.
Use an area to change the position of a layer
If you quickly want to change the position of a layer to the center of an area, you can edit a layer, navigate to the tab position and click on the button change position.
You can then choose to update the position of the layer to the center of one of the template's areas.
Alternatively, you can change the dimension directly in the Live Preview by clicking on the button Position and choosing one of the values.