Searching for early adopters for advanced Web Vector editor.

[andrew_zol]

Hello everybody,

First of all excuse me for my English, I'm not a good English-speaker

Our small team spent last year (and still working on) developing our own platform (https://www.cleverbrush.com/) which could be used in Printing Industry.
The platform is based on our self-written vector editor which makes possible to develop different products over it.

And have a lot of features of web2print product designers and traditional desktop editors:
- different operation with curves (editing path point by point, stroke styles, fill, gradient, etc.).
- image manipulation features (including filters like in Instagram, contrast, luminance, bluring, etc.).
- text manipulation features (gradient on text, curved texts, different font faces, etc..).
- fast export system to vector and raster formats (SVG, PNG, JPEG).
- user can upload images in PNG, JPEG, SVG, AI formats.
- User Interface is adopted for a variety of screen resolutions.
- support of big format prints (canvases up to 25000px X 25000px).
- interface themization support (for now 2 UI themes, but it's possible to extend it).
- simply injectable to the customer's page.
- localization support.
- undo/redo support.
- copy/paste support.
- product versioning support.
- multipage products support.
- grids and rullers.
- snap to objects.
- precise positioning of objects.
- all saved results are ready to print (output in SVG, texts are converted to pathes, it's possible to add bleed offsets, etc.).
- 3D preview of product (coming soon, but see a demo below).

And a lot of more...
As you can see, there are a plenty of cool features.

But the most important is that it's a well extendable system, we could easily on/off existing features and add new ones to fit customer needs.

I think it's better to show some examples what is possible to create now. Here are a links for some demo projects:
https://www.cleverbrush.com/editor/sf9nnojc609l70zmip
https://www.cleverbrush.com/editor/rnk01q5fypa96lyeiz
https://www.cleverbrush.com/editor/68szbyef9eakn7868u

Also there are possibility to create separate product builders on top of this system.

For example here are customizable photo collages with resizable apertures and set of predefined layouts. Each aprerture here can be edited in our editor with features above:
https://www.cleverbrush.com/collage/dvib8w3an73vrpi6bo
https://www.cleverbrush.com/collage/89kkw4sdrrov2umx3j
https://www.cleverbrush.com/collage/nsjn8ftp26wd9q1kyb

Also there is a demo with 3D preview of print over the T-Shirt:
https://3dview.cleverbrush.com/editor/1lcdyrr3jybom2mc2o

Sorry for a long post.

First of all I wanted to ask you for a feedback. As we're not working in Printing industry, we don't know all aspects and features which is requested by industry. May be there is something critical that should be added.
Also it would be interesting to know your thoughts for whom and how this solution could be useful.

And, of course, if somebody is interested to integrate it in their business we would be happy to give you big discounts as for first customers/early adopters.
Feel free to contact us either by email [email protected] or by Contact Us form on our website.

Thank You,
Andrew

 

[Stephen Marsh]

I have not looked at your demos as of yet, so please forgive me if you do some of the below. Off hand some things that I would consider critical on the artwork generation side include:

* Will base templates use open or proprietary file formats for the static content

* PDF output that may contain vector and raster elements

* Colours specified in all supported formats common in PDF (gray, CMYK, RGB and Spot Colour)

* Spot (named) colours defined in RGB, CMYK and or Lab colour models

* Tints of spot colours

* Fully Embedded and or Subset Embedded fonts in PDF files (not outlined)

* Simple rules based “logic” to handle variable text positioning/content (if A, then do B, otherwise do C etc).



Stephen Marsh

 

[andrew_zol]

Thank you, Stephen!

We'll consider your comments. We can easily add PDF output, there is no problem at all. As for colors and fonts, we already have this support.

But I didn't got a last point about "simple rules"...Could you please explain?

 

[OffsetStorefront]

I looked through your demos for a couple minutes and my first impressions:

• It performed really well speed-wise and smoothly
• The UI is very clean and doesn't overwhelm

Some other ideas that would help it be attractive to printers who sell print to other businesses (which is a lot of us):

• The ability for the person who initially sets up a project to make certain parts un-editable so someone else using it to place a print order can't change parts of the design
• The ability for someone to type in text into input fields and have that text automatically placed into the design with that design's correct font, color, etc. (logic rules that apply to these would be great too, like Stephen suggested)

 

[andrew_zol]

I looked through your demos for a couple minutes and my first impressions:

• The ability for the person who initially sets up a project to make certain parts un-editable so someone else using it to place a print order can't change parts of the design
• The ability for someone to type in text into input fields and have that text automatically placed into the design with that design's correct font, color, etc. (logic rules that apply to these would be great too, like Stephen suggested)

Thank you about your comments. As for the locked objects, we already support it, but it yet doesn't reflected in user interface.
As for the rules, I got an idea, but it's not very clear how to implement it from user interface point of view...It looks like a bunch of predefined rules or events for each product template...We'll think about it.
Thank You.

 

[OffsetStorefront]

The type of workflow I would imagine wanting to use this for in a business-to-business context would be something akin to:

1. An administrator sets up a project just the way they want it, with brand-approved designs, colors, fonts, etc.
2. A customer then uses that project as a starting template for further design, or uses it as a live proof as they input variable text into fields

Right now it looks designed for business-to-consumer sales, where the consumer designs something from a blank slate and then orders it to be printed?

That's not a bad thing, but I just wanted to point out that I think that the business-to-business market in printing is fairly large too, if you're wanting to add features to accommodate that as well.

 

[andrew_zol]

Sure, I consider that we'll be working with some predefined templates. Customer will provide us with some existing templates (we even can convert it from customer's legacy system to our format) or will create new templates from scratch.
The links what I sent you is just a demo where you can take a look at possibilities. In these demos it's possible to change any part of layout or just create a new empty project. In case of web2print usage we'll limit the user to make breaking changes in layout.

As for workflows it's simple thing to do, but I think it's more customer specific thing.

 

[gordo]

I think it needs quite a bit of work if you want to target the print/graphic arts market. It feels like a piece of shareware software. Very limited toolset. The only color model I could see was hex
/rgb which is quite limited. You need cmyk and at keast Pantone. Some of the drop down menus civered the art that you are trying to edit so you can’t see what you’re doing. I couldn’t see hiw to edit the brush shape/size/softness. And on.
Perhaps it would good if you did a demo video showing hiw to use the app?

 

[andrew_zol]

I think it needs quite a bit of work if you want to target the print/graphic arts market. It feels like a piece of shareware software. Very limited toolset. The only color model I could see was hex
/rgb which is quite limited. You need cmyk and at keast Pantone.

This is a good comment, however these settings will overload user interface and will turn lightweight tool to something like Photoshop or Illustrator... For now we're assuming that system will be used by end users that know a little about design and color spaces... But if target professional designers and printers that of course it's necessary to have different color spaces support.