Alongside pricing, each decoration method has a block of constraint fields — maximum colors, maximum print size, stitch limits, accepted file types and more. They read as production limits that the Design Studio will enforce. Most of them are not enforced anywhere.
this article is deliberately blunt about which fields do something and which do not, because a shop that trusts the unenforced ones will let unprintable artwork through to production.
Where to Configure Them
- Go to Settings → Decoration Methods.
- Open a method.
- The constraint fields sit alongside the pricing matrix.
- Change what you need and save.
What Is Actually Enforced
Only one constraint changes customer-facing behaviour today:
- Enforces color limit — when this is on for the selected method, the Design Studio shows a color-reduction step as soon as there is any image on the canvas.
the color-reduction step is not triggered by exceeding your configured maximum. It appears for every image on a method that has the color limit turned on, and the reduction tool always offers a fixed target of 6 colors regardless of the Maximum colors value you saved. Setting Maximum colors to 4, or to 12, changes nothing in the studio.
What Is Recorded but Not Enforced
These fields save correctly and appear when you reopen the method, but nothing reads them:
- Maximum colors — stored; the studio uses a fixed 6 instead. Nothing rejects artwork for having too many colors.
- Maximum print width and height — stored; the boundary drawn on the canvas comes from the product's impression area, not from the method. A method limit smaller than the product's print area will not shrink the boundary or block oversized art.
- Maximum stitch count — stored; nothing checks it.
- Vinyl colors — stored, and the panel only appears for a method whose slug is
htv. The built-in heat transfer method is created with the slugheat-transfer, so on a standard shop this panel never appears at all. - Accepted file types (per method) — stored; uploads are governed by the shop-wide accepted file types under Settings → Designer and by the server's own list, never by the per-method toggles.
- Minimum order quantity — stored; no cart, checkout or order path compares a quantity against it.
What the Canvas Actually Shows
- The print-area boundary comes from the impression area defined on the product, on the Media tab of that product. Set it there, not here.
- The method does tint the color of that boundary outline, so different methods look different on the canvas.
- The physical size readout next to a selected object is calculated from the product's impression area too.
Practical Guidance
- Enforce print size by setting accurate impression areas on your products. That is the only place a size limit takes effect.
- Control what customers can upload from Settings → Designer, not from the per-method file type list.
- Keep the constraint fields filled in anyway if they are useful to your team as a written record of your equipment, but treat them as notes, not guardrails.
- Check every proof before production. Nothing in the Design Studio will stop artwork that exceeds your method limits.