TABLE OF CONTENTS

These are the primary contents covered in this article:
Why do you have to reposition cliparts before uploading them to Dastomize?
Resize and Reposition Cliparts in Photoshop

Why do you have to reposition cliparts before uploading them to Dastomize?

You may face a case like this: A customer selects a random clipart from your clipart category. The selected clipart will replace the original layer; however, it is in an inappropriate position or size.
For example:
We have a default hair layer here which is a Bun clipart. When we choose another Bun clipart, it will fit perfectly because they have the same size and position (just in different colors).

However, if we select another hair clipart, we can see that the new clipart is too small compared to the body and also has incorrect position.

The reason is that Dastomize will scale the alternative clipart to fit the size and position of the original layer. In this case, the other hair clipart will be scaled down to fit the height and width of the Bun hairstyle, which makes it look smaller and inappropriate:


It will be a pain if you have many sub-categories such as dog breeds, cat breeds, shoes, clothes,... Therefore, if you have a large collection of cliparts and aiming to sell personalized clipart products in a long term, you should resize and reposition cliparts in Photoshop before uploading them to Dastomize. In this way, you only need to do it once, and you can reuse cliparts efficiently.

Resize and Reposition Cliparts in Photoshop

First of all, please be aware that this work will require lots of patience, but it will help us save much more time later when creating beautiful personalized artworks with cliparts.

Please go through this resources checklist before moving on:
A body clipart.
Hair cliparts with different styles and colors: Bun, Short hair, Long hair, Curly hair.

Step 1: Create a new file in Photoshop.

Size of the newly created file should be bigger than the original size of your cliparts to make sure it will fit all hairstyles.
Please pay attention to other settings like:
- Resolution = 300 DPI
- Color Mode = RGB
- Bit should follow the settings of your original clipart, the default is 8-bit.


You must remove the background layer (if any) and leave it transparent to reposition cliparts in Photoshop.

Step 2: Insert a base layer as the standard for cliparts to follow.

In this case, you can add the Body layer as a base. The base layer must be STABLE and stand still during finalizing steps.

Step 3: Select all the cliparts in the hair folder and drag them to Photoshop.

Then, click the checkmark or press Enter to add each clipart to the file. Don't resize anything yet.

We don't need to resize each clipart because we can do it at once.

Step 4: Organize the cliparts which have the same size into a group.

Step 4.1: Shift + Click to select a range of clipart layers or just Click to select separated ones (Hairstyles of the same size and shape should be grouped).
Step 4.2: Press Ctrl+G or Command+G to group the selected layers, so we can apply all settings to the whole group.
For example, you divide the hair layers in this folder into 4 groups: the Bun, Short, Long and Curly.

Step 5: Resize and reposition each layer group.

Step 5.1: Enable the Eye icon of the layer group that you are going to reposition: the Short hair. Make sure other groups are being disabled.
Step 5.2: Click to select the group in the Layers menu, select Edit > Free Transform or press the hotkey Ctrl+T to move the whole group.
Step 5.3: Resize and reposition the short hair clipart group so that it is in proportion to the head and body.
Step 5.4: Click the Eye icon again to hide the first finalized Short hair clipart group.



Then, repeat step 5 with other clipart groups: Long, Curly and Bun. You will have results like these:

Step 6: Remove the base layer (the body layer), then enable the Eye icon of all layer groups.

Step 7: Ungroup all 4 hair groups.

Right-click each group and choose Ungroup Layers or press the hotkey Ctrl+ Shift + G or Command + Option + G.

During these steps, DO NOT move any hair layer.

Step 8:

Step 8.1: Create selection of layer by selecting all clipart layers and then choose Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E (or select Flatten layers)
This step is to group all existing hair layers, which have been resized and well repositioned.
Step 8.2: Ctrl + Click the thumbnail of the newly created Flatten layer.
Step 8.3: Select Crop or press the hotkey "C" then Enter twice to crop all cliparts at once.



Step 8.4: After you cropped the Flatten layer, just delete it. (The cropped hair layers still remain)

Step 9: Export the hair layers into separated files with the correct size and position in the 2 following ways:

Method 1: Export clipart manually per each layer.

Step 9.1.1: Alt + Click the eye icon of the layer to enable only 1 layer.
Step 9.1.2: Go to File > Save As > PNG > Save.
Step 9.1.3: Continue to export the other layers to files until finished.

Method 2: Export all cliparts automatically at once.

Step 9.2.1: Make sure you turn on the visibility of the layers that you want to export.
Step 9.2.2: Go to File > Export > Layers to Files.
Step 9.2.3: A pop-up window will appear, containing the export images and prefix file name. You must pay attention to these options:
- The file type must be in PNG format.
- Choose Visible Layers Only.
- In the PNG exporting options: Keep the Transparency and disable the Trim Layers.



Step 9.2.4: Browse a destination folder for your new outcome cliparts.
Step 9.2.5: Click RUN to start exporting. Wait until the process completes. Then, we will have a brand new folder of all cliparts with the correct size and position.



When finish, the new modified clipart categories are ready to be uploaded to Dastomize.
Select the resized and repositioned clipart category when defining a design. Now, you only have to scale a clipart and the other ones in the same category will fit too.



Learn More: Define Design: Cliparts

Updated on: 20/05/2022