ImagesMagUK_January_2021

There is a dizzying array of tools for creating digital mock-ups” garment information, but won’t produce the most accurate mock-ups as you can’t distort the image beyond sizing. These tools are good for sending out information and decently attractive mock- ups, but may not be of a high enough quality for online store ‘hero’ images. Third party mock-up tools These may have multiple product lines represented, but can be limited in selection. The most advanced may have some transparency/ texturing that allows for a more natural look in print through blending shirt textures with flat images, but this has little effect on the appearance of embroidery. The images are often slightly more attractive and may have unique pictures and/or placement, as well as offering some more advanced distortion on objects like hats, though this is not universal. Some tools are less able to handle pre- made embroidery design images well, being geared towards creating faux- embroidery images from print graphics. In such tools, the auto-digitised result can be left wanting in terms of embroidery quality. These tools are quick to use and require no technical skill to master, and some may have more dynamic images than the classic catalogue shots, but they are often limited when it comes to presenting the best images for embroidery. These images are great for concepts, but may require the support of detailed embroidery design images to show the quality of your shop’s embroidery interpretation. Ecommerce online design tools If you have an ecommerce site with an online design tool that natively handles embroidery files, you can also use those tools for standard direct quoting and mock-ups. These tools benefit from a large selection of garment images and specs from our industry, although they generally make use of flat, front-facing mock-ups in the same fashion as most vendor tools. If these tools have embroidery capability, they usually create similar faux-3D previews to those produced by your embroidery software. With the garment selection, stitch-file-based previews, the ability to display product specs, and generally accurate measurements, they are arguably top for simplicity. That said, not all shops will have implemented these systems. Embroidery software compositing tools Some software suites will have built-in visualisation tools for compositing product images with decoration. When present, these tools use the 3D-preview engines of the software in concert with either generic product templates that are already in place in the software or user-created product templates. These suites may benefit from tools that allow precise scaling by using on- screen rulers to measure elements in the imported product images. These tools size product photos in relation to the decoration scale, meaning that a properly imported image will show the decoration at size. The downside to these tools is that users will very likely need to add their own custom product images in order to show the actual products ordered by the customers. Importing new images can require a fair amount of work to create the flat images that conform to the specs required by the software. This set-up is only required the first time a template is created, but involves a similar amount of labour to creating manual mock-ups and can require images to be worked on in graphics software prior to import. Also, there is a risk of the automatic recolouring that these engines perform looking a bit artificial. If a shop is prepared to invest in building up a collection of templates for their most-used garments, then tools like these can provide a quicker path to finished mock-ups for those core staples. The manual method Using raster graphics software, decorators can manually composite either catalogue images provided by garment vendors or their own photographs with preview images of embroidered designs. Many embroidery software packages will output a transparent PNG of the faux- stitching 3D preview generated from an embroidery design. Armed with anything from free software like Gimp, to low-cost alternatives like Affinity Photo, or the ever-present Photoshop, decorators can place, size, and skew these previews over garment images manually. This method is the most labour-intensive and requires the most skill – it is, however, the most versatile. Although you can’t automatically create a flyer complete with garment specs and images in a few clicks, you can finely adjust sizing and placement, tweak colour and lighting, and even use tools like a ‘mesh warp’ to This high-resolution graphic created by embroidery software can be layered onto garments and warped for placement in graphics software, or layered onto a flat rendering using simple mock-up tools as seen with most vendors Despite the poor rendition of the embroidery, some third-party mock-up generators may be useful for their warping feature since it is quick to use and requires no skill with graphics software. For a fast-concept mock- up, this is a more compelling view than most straight-on catalogue shots www.images-magazine.com JANUARY 2021 images 93 KB BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT