Why You Shouldn’t Upload Photos With Pre-Applied Art

The Problem With Pre-Applied Art

1. Doesn’t play nicely with every product

NowCandid sells products in many shapes and sizes. If your file already has art baked in (logos, frames, banners, etc.), that art can get cropped on products with different aspect ratios. The result: subjects don’t like what they see, orders drop, and refund/support requests go up. Especially from shoppers who assume a problem they saw when previewing the product on the retail site would magically fix itself on the final product.

2. Auto-enhance + retouching can distort your art or image

We apply Retail Enhancement to help nudge under- or over-exposed images into a more balanced, attractive look on phones and tablets. When art is baked into the pixels, it can:

• Shift brightness/contrast of the art unexpectedly
  
• Shift brightness/contrast of the image unexpectedly
  
• Interfere with retouching tools and/or AI image-editing features

3. Cutout products can get messed up

For items like Statuettes, Wall Clings, Statuette Magnets, and other hand-cut products: if art overlaps any part of the subject, that art will appear on the subject in the final piece. There’s no clean way to “peel it off” later.

4. Support can’t navigate every situation without the original‍

Our in-house retail support team (right here at our Oklahoma City headquarters) does everything we can to help your shoppers without pulling you in. But if we don’t have the original, art-free image, our options are limited—and some simple fixes become impossible.

‍Bottom line: Any downstream manipulation (product fit, edits, cutouts, or support adjustments) gets harder or impossible when art is pre-applied to the upload.

What To Do Instead (Best Practice)

Upload clean photos, add the art in NowCandid. You’ll get the same visual result you want, minus the pitfalls.

Overlay options built for retail

• Banner Overlay (recommended for most): Upload a 3000×500 banner that supports full transparency. You can even make it entirely transparent with just your logo on the right. Instant, flexible watermarking that auto-fits applicable products and stays off specialty products.
• Full-Frame Overlay (maximum control): Customize a full-frame design with transparency wherever you want.

Why overlays win

• They’re easy to turn on/off or swap without re-uploading imagery.
• They auto-fit across products and orientations.
• They stay separate from the image pixels, so Retail Enhancement, retouching, and AI auto-edits perform as intended.
• They won’t land on the subject in cutout products.

Free Background Removal

Pair overlays with free background removal to achieve polished, on-brand looks that still play nicely with every product and edit option.

If You Absolutely Must Pre-Apply Art

We don’t recommend it, but if a situation requires pre-branded files:

• Keep all graphics well outside the subject and inside critical crop zones.
• Avoid placing art anywhere it could be cut out along with the subject.
• Stick to a limited product mix with thought-through aspect ratios.
• Expect that Retail Enhancement/AI edits may alter the look of your art.
• Be prepared for higher support volume and potential resubmits.

Policy & Billing

To avoid costly surprises for everyone, we post this notice on the upload page:

Warning: Photos uploaded with pre-applied art/watermarks may cause issues. Any costs related to resubmits or refunds due to these issues will be billed to the photographer.

When pre-applied art creates a retail support issue (refund or resubmit), we’ll bill:

• Refunds: the costs associated with the original order
• Resubmits: the product cost of the new replacement

We Want Your Feedback

Have a feature request or a special case we should support? Tell us what you need. Our development team continually iterates on NowCandid’s features to help you snap more, stress less.

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