Quickstart

From install to your first customizable product live on your store. About five minutes of work.

Pixel Wrangler is a product customizer for Shopify. Your customers design the product. You print it and ship it.

This page gets you from a fresh install to a live customizable product. Five minutes if you've got artwork ready. Fifteen if you don't.

What you need

  • A Shopify store on any plan that allows app installs
  • One product you want to make customizable
  • A blank version of that product as a PNG (transparent background helps)

If you have all three, keep reading. If you don't have the blank, any flat product photo with a clean background works for now — swap it later.

Step 1 — Install

Install Pixel Wrangler from the Shopify App Store. You land in the admin with an empty template list.

One theme-editor step: in Online Store → Themes → Customize, open a product page and add the Customise Button block (Add block → Apps). No theme code to edit. The full walkthrough, plus the cart preview, is in Installing Pixel Wrangler.

Step 2 — Create a template

Click New template.

A template is the canvas your customer designs on. It has:

  • A base image (your blank product)
  • A canvas size (the area customers can draw inside)
  • One or more placeholders (text, image, sticker, background, or mask slots)

Upload your blank. Set the canvas to roughly match the printable area. Drop in a text placeholder where you want the customer's text to go, an image placeholder where you want them to upload artwork, or both.

The Preview button shows the customer's view at any time.

Step 3 — Link a product

In the template settings, find Linked products and search for the Shopify product you want this template to power. Save.

With the block in place from Step 1, the product page on your storefront now shows a Customise button. Click it as a customer to design, click Add to cart to test the full flow.

Step 4 — Place a test order

Open the product on your storefront in an incognito window. Customise a design. Add to cart. Check out (test mode is fine).

A few seconds after the order is paid, the order detail in your Shopify admin shows:

  • A custom thumbnail of the design
  • A link to the full-resolution preview
  • A print-ready file ready to hand to fulfilment

If something didn't render, the Orders tab inside Pixel Wrangler flags failed renders and gives you a one-click retry.

Step 5 — Show the design in your order email

By default, Shopify's order confirmation email shows the stock product image. Most merchants swap that for what the customer actually designed. Two-minute paste — see Customizing order confirmation emails.

What's next

You have a live customizable product. Three things worth doing before launching it widely:

  • Add more placeholders. Multi-sided products (front/back/sleeves), more text slots, extra image and sticker slots. See Templates 101.
  • Set your print output. Format, DPI, file naming for your fulfilment partner — see Sides and output files.

Welcome aboard.