# Variable Data Printing

Mass-customize design and print workflows without trying. Inspire users with customizable templates and streamline production with automated print validation.   Empower users to design effortlessly on the client while generating variations on your servers.

*Step by step*

## How to Integrate a Creative Editor into Your VDP Workflow

*Integrate our SDK with a few lines of code*

Create adaptable design templates on the client and generate infinite variations on the server.   You can use any data source and perform any edit operation on the server thanks to our headless editor API.

*Create smart templates*

Create adaptable design templates on the client and generate infinite variations on the server.   You can use any data source and perform any edit operation on the server thanks to our headless editor API.

*Define constraints and variables*

Smart templates define constraints and variables guiding which elements can be modified and in which way. Tag an element as a variable, connect your template to a data source, and generate countless personalizations within seconds.

*Enable customization of print creatives at scale*

Empower your users to create on-brand content variations for multichannel print output in minutes and automatically personalize any print product from brochures over packaging to apparel.

*Support direct mail campaigns*

Your users can easily define text variables in their templates and scale direct mail campaigns whether itâs personalizing postcards, greeting cards or brochures.   All it takes is connecting templates to a data source to automatically generate print-ready files.

*Implement automated print validation process*

Predefine bleed margins, spot colors, and page clippings and set automatic alerts in case of any errors, such as design extending beyond bleed margins.   You can also implement content moderation to safeguard designs against harmful content or trademark infringements.

*Automate variable design elements with AI*

CE.SDK now brings built-in AI capabilities to variable data printing workflows, enabling the instant generation of personalized graphics, headlines, messages, and layouts from simple prompts.   With model-agnostic AI plugins, you can integrate any third-party model or API to scale individualized content productionâboosting efficiency while maintaining full creative flexibility.

*Provide seamless user experience across all platforms*

Build a perfect UI for web, iOS, Android, and server, eliminating common errors plaguing web-to-print applications. Benefits include uniform and consistent features across all platforms, such as text rendering.

### Everything you need

## Key Capabilities

Extensive features to serve any use case and enable a smooth and enjoyable creation process.

### Editing

#### Adjustments

- Web

- Mobile

Fine-tune designs with an exhaustive set of adjustment operations such as brightness and contrast.

#### Effect & Blur

- Web

- Mobile

Add a unique mood to designs with effects & blur.

#### Element Snapping

- Web

- Mobile

Snap stickers and text to control points for more precise placements.

#### Blend Modes & Grouping

- Web

- Mobile

Define the blending behavior and grouping.

#### Undo & Redo

- Web

- Mobile

Allow users to undo and redo all editing operations.

### Printing

#### PDF/X Export

- Web

- Mobile

Export print-ready files in industry-standard PDF/X formats to ensure reliable, color-accurate production.

#### Cutout Lines

- Web

- Mobile

Create and customize cutout shapes for web-to-print.

#### CMYK/ Spot color support

- Web

- Mobile

Integrate CMYK and Pantone color spaces, customized color libraries, including your brand's colors.

### Templating

#### Design Templates

- Web

- Mobile

Create role based design templates to jumpstart usersâ creativity.

#### Text Variables

- Web

- Mobile

Enable mass personalization and creative automation by embedding variables.

#### Placeholders & Lockable Designs

- Web

- Mobile

Constrain templates to guide your usersâ design and ensure brand consistency.

#### Configurable Presets

- Web

- Mobile

Enforce a consistent aesthetic across all creations by using preset filters, adjustments, fonts, and crop ratios.

### Customizability

#### Build Custom UIs

- Web

- Mobile

Use the headless API powering all creative operations to implement an entirely custom UI.

#### Theming

- Web

- Mobile

Change the editor theme to fit seamlessly with your app.

#### Media Libraries

- Web

- Mobile

Set up custom libraries that are easily sortable.

#### Toolbar Customization

- Web

- Mobile

Reposition toolbar elements, change icons, or rename tools to fit your use case.

#### Internationalization

- Web

- Mobile

Add support for additional languages, and customize any button label.

#### Export Options

- Web

- Mobile

Export designs in JPG, PNG, or PDF with custom quality, page ranges, and dimensions.

*Thereâs more*

### Check Out More Use Cases

*Revamp your printing process for heightened efficiency, superior quality, and unleashed user creativity.*

#### Web2Print Designer

Elevate your Web2Print application with best-in-class Design Editor.

#### Photo Prints

Provide seamless design experience and inspire users with easily personalized templates.

#### Print Personalization

Streamline personalization for your print products.

#### Collage Designer

Build a customizable collage editor, design any number of layout templates and deploy on any platform.

#### Poster Designer

Build a fully custom poster designer on any platform with our modern design editor SDK.

#### Photo Book Designer

Easily build any photo book UI & use case, create templates and layouts to jumpstart your customersâ designs.

#### Greeting Card Designer

Whether anniversary cards, thank you cards or wedding invitations, build for any use case, deploy on any platform.

#### Postcard Designer

Whether post cards, greeting cards or wedding invitations, build for any use case, deploy on any platform.

#### Apparel Designer

Whether t-shirts, hoodies or caps, build for any use case, deploy on any platform.

#### More to discover

## Explore Our Demos

*See how IMG.LY looks and feels.*

*Check out our*

## What Our Clients Say About Us

Integrating IMG.LYâs editor meant we didnât have to build or maintain a complex editing layer ourselves. That kept our team focused on our core AI ad engine and saved us countless development hours â while still giving our customers the ability to polish and customize creatives at scale.

Hikari Senju@CEO@Omneky

With IMG.LY we built a central creative portal that now powers over 140 dealer campaigns across multiple automotive brands. Before this, asset creation was slow and inconsistent. IMG.LY gave us the scale and flexibility we needed to grow.

Martin RÃ¶hr@Product Owner@Digitas

By embedding IMG.LYâs editor we were able to hit key RFP requirements and deliver a template-based creative experience that now serves 1,000+ customers. It helped us win more deals and exceed enterprise expectations without needing to hire dedicated design teams.

Rob Driscoll@Director of PM@Optimizely

Since integrating IMG.LYâs editor, we now deliver 30,000+ ad creatives per month dramatically shorten time-to-launch, and help our clients cut design spend by up to $10,000 per month.This capability has been essential to delivering on our promise of fast, scalable creative production.

Logan Welbaum@Founder@Plai

IMG.LYâs solution engineers did a deep dive on our business case and helped us implement a custom print kiosk UI.

AndrÃ© Albrecht@Digital Solution Manager@Brother

Our customers create over a million personalized postcards each year choosing from over hundreds of templates with IMG.LYâs SDK. Itâs the only solution that allows us to build our own specialized, on-brand UI that integrates seamlessly with our platform.

Jeanine Zaalberg@Product Manager@Swiss Post

Our app has photo-editing at the very core of its experience and the editor has been invaluable in making that vision happen. There are no other tools on the market up to the quality of PE.SDK.

Toby Green@Lead Developer@Elbi

From a developerâs perspective, the most powerful feature of the photo editor is the integration process. It was completely flawless, quick, and easy to integrate.

Stefano Fornari@CTO@Funambol/Zefiro

Our developers loved that the integration was really straightforward and that everything you need like APIs and documentation is easy to find and of excellent quality.

Thomas Witt@Head of Product@Infopark

I believe that it is one of the easiest to use and most powerful editors on the market and the integration possibilities into our solution are awesome.

Marcus Burk@Head of Marketing@dirico.io

We compared PhotoEditor SDK with other solutions and found that it would be the best fit for us since it provides all the features that are crucial for our use case.

Carem Pereira@SCRUM Manager@HP

## Get in Touch

Contact our sales team to learn more about licensing options and get access to our AI plugins for CE.SDK.

## FAQs

### What is the difference between creative automation and variable data printing?

Creative automation refers to the general process of programmatically creating or editing designs, all aspects of a design are subject to change whether colors, fonts or element position. In addition a data source can be used to update dynamic elements of the design.  Variable data printing refers specifically to using data to create variations of a specific design template. The designs thus created are then further processed in a down-stream printing workflow producing physical prints.

### Can I implement roles and permissions using the SDK?

While there is no functionality included with theÂ editor that allows implementing roles and permissions you can use any backend technology or framework to control access to the editor. Furthermore our SDK features are extendible allowing for hooks where permissions can be checked and the editor behavior customized accordingly.

### What products & materials can I personalize with the SDK?

Thanks to a fully customizable UI, you can easily use our editor for personalization of paper prints, such as postcards, greeting cards, wedding invitations, and packaging; apparel (t-shirts, tote bags, caps, or shoes); and marketing materials - brochures, flyers, and catalogs.

### Can we integrate our own assets (Sticker, Frames, Overlays)?

Yes, absolutely! Please refer to our [documentation](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/js/import-media/from-remote-source/unsplash-8f31f0/) for more information on that topic.

### Can I decide on which features to implement?

Yes, you have full control over which features you decide to use. You can configure the toolbar on mobile and on web you can interface with the API directly to build the exact feature you need.

### Can I see what my design would look like on print?

Yes, CE.SDK has a live preview function that visualizes the final product, allowing you and your users to better manage expectations.

### Which platforms/ frameworks are supported?

Our IMG.LY SDK is suitable for web and mobile (Android & iOS). Supported frameworks are React-Native, Flutter, Ionic, and Cordova for mobile and React, Angular, Svelte and Vue.js for web. For more information, please visit our [Guides](https://img.ly/docs/vesdk/guides/) .

### Which export file formats for print do you support?

All CreativeEditor SDKÂ scenes can be exported in PNG, JPEG, TGA, binary, and PDF. See the export guide in the documentation for more information on [exporting scenes](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/js/export-save-publish/export/overview-9ed3a8/) .

### Can I import existing designs files into the SDK?

You can always import individual elements as PNG, JPG or SVG, we are currently working on importers for PDF and the most common design file formats.

### Which export file formats for print do you support?

All CreativeEditor SDKÂ scenes can be exported in PNG, JPEG, TGA, binary, and PDF. See the export guide in the documentation for more information on [exporting scenes](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/js/export-save-publish/export/overview-9ed3a8/) .

### Can I enable/ disable a function by default?

Yes, you have full control over the Editorâs UI and functionality. You can also take full control over the editing process with smart templates, lockable designs and placeholders.

### Do you offer integration support?

Yes, apart from accessing our complete [CreativeEngine documentation](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/js/get-started/overview-e18f40/) you can also contact our support team. Our solutions team offer different levels of support based on your license type.  To explore your use case and potential solutions with us simply [get in touch.](https://img.ly/forms/contact-sales)

### Which frameworks do you support for building custom UIs?

You can use any Javascript framework to implement a custom UIÂ on top of our [headless CreativeEngine API](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/node/get-started/overview-e18f40/) . You can find dedicated getting started guides for [React,](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/react/get-started/overview-e18f40/)  [Vue](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/vue/get-started/overview-e18f40/) , [Angular](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/angular/get-started/overview-e18f40/) and [Svelte](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/svelte/get-started/overview-e18f40/) in our documentation.

### Which server-side technologies do you support?

You can run the CreativeEngine in a Node.js environment and deploy it on any platform with Node.js support. See [this guide](https://img.ly/docs/cesdk/node/automation/multi-image-generation-2a0de4/) on how to deploy on AWS for reference.

### Can I try your Editors to see how it works?

Yes, we offer a free trial for all our products. You can get your [free trial](https://img.ly/forms/free-trial) right now.

### Can my users edit their photos using IMG.LY SDKs when they are offline?

As the editor works client-side, a permanent internet connection isn't necessary for the editor to run properly. Once the device reconnects, available updates can be installed and the export tracking will be communicated. However, if you require the SDK to work in a purely offline environment please [contact our sales team](https://img.ly/forms/contact-sales) to request an offline license.

## Read our White Papers


[Source](https://img.ly/case-studies/halio)