Advanced Editor
Full-featured design editor with canvas manipulation, layers, text styling, image effects, and complete creative control.
The Advanced Editor is the full-featured mode of the Print Editor. It gives customers complete creative control over the canvas — positioning elements, changing fonts and colors, uploading images, applying effects, and managing layers. This mode is ideal for products where customers need design flexibility, such as posters, flyers, invitations, and custom marketing materials.
How Advanced Mode Works
When a product's editor mode is set to Advanced, the Print Editor provides:
- Full canvas interaction — Customers can click, drag, resize, and rotate any editable item directly on the canvas.
- All items visible — Every item appears in the layers panel, with visibility and lock controls.
- Complete styling tools — Text panel with font, size, color, alignment, shadow, and outline controls. Image panel with upload, crop, effects, and border tools.
- Sidebar panels — Configurable panels for images, elements, backgrounds, layouts, layers, and more.
Editor Panels and Tools
Toolbar
The top toolbar provides:
- Undo / Redo — Full history support for all canvas changes
- Zoom controls — Zoom in/out and fit-to-page
- Alignment — Align and distribute selected items
- Copy / Paste / Delete — Standard editing operations
- Item ordering — Bring forward, send backward
Text Panel
When a text item is selected, the text panel provides styling controls based on the permissions configured in Admin Mode:
- Font family and size (within configured min/max bounds)
- Bold, italic, underline styles
- Text color (from the assigned Color Palette)
- Text alignment (left, center, right, justify)
- Line spacing (leading)
- Text shadow and outline effects
Image Panel
The image panel lets customers work with image items:
- Upload photos from their device
- Browse site albums and personal albums
- Search stock photo integrations (if enabled)
- Import from social media (if enabled)
- Crop and reposition within the image frame
- Apply effects — brightness, contrast, saturation, filters
- Add borders with color and width controls
Layers Panel
The layers panel shows all items in z-order with:
- Item name and type icon
- Visibility toggle — Show/hide items
- Lock toggle — Prevent accidental edits
- Transform controls — Precise X, Y position, width, height, and rotation values
- Click-to-select for navigating to items on the canvas
UI Toggles
Each product's visible panels and tools are controlled by UI Toggles on the Product Setup page. These toggles let you customize the Advanced Editor experience per product.
| Toggle | Description |
|---|---|
| Products Panel | Shows the "More Products" sidebar panel with related products. |
| Images Panel | Shows the image browser sidebar panel. |
| Layers Panel | Shows the layers panel for item management. |
| Add Text Button | Allows customers to add new text items to the canvas. |
| Upload Photos | Enables the photo upload button in the image panel. |
| Image Search | Enables stock photo search integration. |
| Image Social | Enables social media image import (Facebook, Instagram). |
| Data List Management | Enables variable data / data list features. |
| Data List Forced On | Forces data list mode to be active by default. |
| Digital Download | Enables digital download option for the product. |
| Restrict New Items | Prevents customers from adding new items to the canvas (text or images). Limits editing to existing template items only. |
Advanced Mode vs Simple Mode
See the Simple Editor page for a detailed comparison. In summary:
- Advanced mode provides full creative freedom with canvas manipulation, styling tools, and all sidebar panels.
- Simple mode restricts the interface to a form-based experience where only items with Allow Changes enabled appear as editable fields.
You can create a middle ground by using Advanced mode with Restrict New Items enabled and selective item permissions — this gives customers canvas interaction but limits what they can change.
Associations
Print Store
| Area | Effect |
|---|---|
| Products | The Editor Mode dropdown on the product edit page's Print Editor tab controls whether a product opens in Advanced mode. UI Toggles further customize which panels and tools are available. |
Print Editor
| Area | Effect |
|---|---|
| Product Setup | All Advanced Editor behavior is configured via the Product Setup page — editor mode, UI toggles, and asset assignments. |
| Design Assets | Fonts (Font Files), layouts (Layouts), themes (Background Themes), clipart (Elements), and colors (Color Pallets) assigned to the product populate the editor sidebar panels. |
| Live Preview | Preview Type settings determine how the product preview renders — flat proof, 3D model rotation, or photo mockup compositing. |
| Rules Engine | The Rules Engine is fully supported in Advanced mode, evaluating conditions and applying actions as customers edit the canvas. |
| Admin Mode | Item permissions configured in Admin Mode (Allow Changes, Allow Position, style permissions) still apply in Advanced mode, controlling what customers can modify on each item. |
Related Pages
- Simple Editor — the alternative streamlined editor mode for controlled templates
- Product Setup — set editor mode, UI toggles, and asset assignments per product
- Admin Mode — configure item permissions that control what customers can edit
- Products — create and manage products that use the Advanced Editor