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Printlab Overview
Imagely has partnered with White House Custom Color (WHCC) printlab to offer an easy way to have your print orders automatically fulfilled. Not only does this save you time, but it also provides you with a wide selection of printing options (i.e. Fuji Deep Matte, Fuji Lustre, Fine Art Canvas, Standout Black Edge, White Styrene Mounted, and more!).
NOTE: Although White House Custome Color (WHCC) ships globally, the print fulfillment service is only available to our customers who are based in the United States or Canada. If your business is based in another country, please see this section below.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO CREATE A WHCC ACCOUNT
All orders are sent through us to WHCC. You do not need to create a separate account.
Printlab requires an active NextGEN Pro license to work.
If you see this error message at the top of your WordPress dashboard, you need to return to your Imagely Account to renew your membership. This may require that you repurchase NextGEN Pro and then re-install the NextGEN Pro plugin to install the new active license. Once installed, this message will disappear, and your orders will submit to WHCC to be automatically fulfilled (you can confirm the successful orders under Ecommerce > View Orders > Order Status ‘Submitted’). If your license expires again (you choose not to renew your membership), your orders will no longer be submitted to WHCC.
How Printlab Works
Set Up Payments
Navigate to eCommerce Options > Print Lab Integration: You can use any NextGEN Pro payment gateway to collect payments for orders. However, if you wish to process lab-fulfilled orders, you must provide a credit card that will be billed for the cost of goods for orders fulfilled by the print lab. When a customer purchases a print, the cost of prints will be immediately charged to this credit card, and the order will be submitted to WHCC to be fulfilled.
To break it down in steps, this is how order processing works:
Set up your Stripe and/or PayPal accounts under ‘Payment Gateway’ – This is where you will receive the payment from your customer. Learn how to set these up here: Printlab Payment Gateway Setup
Add your credit card for Printlab Integration – After your customer submits their payment, you will receive the total amount charged to them – to your PayPal or Stripe account. Their order will be processed through us and submitted to WHCC. The total cost charged to your credit card will be the ‘COST’ listed when you add a print option to your pricelist. The profit you keep will depend on the price you list for your customers.
Create/Edit Your Pricelist
Navigate to eCommerce Options > Manage Pricelists and create (or edit) a pricelist. Select ‘Add Product’ at the top and select from the three options: WHCC, Manual Fulfillment, and/or Digital Downloads…
- WHCC – These products will be automatically fulfilled through White House Custom Color print lab.
How do the prints get sent to WHCC?
When your customer submits an order from your checkout page, the following takes place:
1) The order is sent to us where we run through a process of steps to fulfill the order.
2) The order is segmented into shipments as dictated by WHCC’s drop-shipping specifications and the shipments are submitted to WHCC using their API.
3) WHCC provides us with an invoice for the cost of goods.
4) We will bill your credit card that you setup under Ecommerce > Ecommerce Options > PrintLab Integration.
5) WHCC bills us for the cost of goods. We covered our cost in the step above.
6) You will receive an e-mail informing whether their order was sent to WHCC successfully or not. - Manual Fulfillment – These products will be fulfilled by you and will not be submitted to WHCC.
- Digital Downloads – will be made available to users for download immediately after purchase.
Read more about setting up your pricelist here: Adding Printlab to Your Gallery
Assign Pricelist to Gallery
To assign your pricelist to a gallery, navigate to NextGEN Gallery > Manage Galleries > Select your gallery, select the ‘Gallery Settings‘ tab at the top of the list of images, select your pricelist, and save changes. You can modify what images are for sale, what images should be assigned to a different pricelist, or leave the assigned pricelist as the default listed under ‘Gallery Settings’.
Minimum Resolutions for WHCC Prints
The following table is the minimum resolution allowed for prints sent from NextGEN Pro to WHCC (White House Custom Colour). These minimums are lower than what WHCC recommends, so it’s always good for quality if you go larger. At the same time, these minimums are also just a bit higher than the industry standard from other software with automated print fulfillment.
Print Size (Inches) | DPI | Minimum Image Size |
8 up wallets | 150 | 375×525 |
4×6 | 150 | 600×900 |
5×5 | 150 | 750×750 |
5×7 | 150 | 750×1050 |
8×10 | 125 | 1000×1250 |
8×12 | 125 | 1000×1500 |
11×14 | 100 | 1100×1400 |
16×20 | 100 | 1600×2000 |
16×24 | 75 | 1200×1800 |
20×30 | 75 | 1500×2250 |
24×30 | 75 | 1800×2250 |
24×36 | 75 | 1800×2700 |
30×40 | 75 | 2250×3000 |
Insert Your Gallery to Your Page or Blog Post
As of WordPress v5.0 you will need to install the Classic Editor plugin to continue editing your posts and pages the way you have been used to.
The Add Gallery Window is accessed by clicking the (+) symbol and select the NextGEN Gallery ‘Add Gallery’ icon to the right as shown in this screenshot below.
Select the NextGEN Gallery icon (or searching for ‘NextGEN Gallery’ above the list):
Click Add NextGEN Gallery:
After selecting your gallery display, select the tab at the top of the Add Gallery Window Customize Display Settings
Under Customize display settings, be sure to select Enable eCommerce before inserting the gallery into the page.
Finally, just insert your gallery:
5) Publish/Update your page. You should now see your prints available in the Pro Lightbox. If you do not see the Pro Lightbox display, navigate to NextGEN Gallery > Other Options > Lightbox Effects to activate it.
CUSTOMERS BASED OUTSIDE OF THE U.S. OR CANADA
Unfortunately, WHCC only serves businesses that are based in the United States or Canada. This means that Imagely’s automatic print fulfillment feature is unavailable to customers in other countries. If you are one of our customers in another country and sell prints on your website, you’ll need to create a different process for fulfillment.
- Find a Print Company for Your Country – You will need to find a print lab that serves the country where you are based and fulfill print orders through them. If you’re based in the U.K. or Europe, we recommend checking out WhiteWall or Loxley Colour as possible options. Both of these companies are highly regarded, ship internationally, and serve businesses outside of the U.S.
- Set Up Payments – This is where you will receive the payment from your customer. Navigate to eCommerce Options > Payment Gateways to set up the payment methods for customers and connect your PayPal and/or Stripe account to receive payments. Learn more about setting up payments here.
- Create/Edit Pricelists – Navigate to eCommerce Options > Manage Pricelists and create (or edit) a pricelist. Select Add Product at the top and select Manual Fulfillment from the three options. This means that the products will be fulfilled by you and not submitted to our automatic print service. You’ll want to set up your price list to reflect the print fulfillment/shipping costs of the company you are using and any additional markups.
- Assign Pricelist to Gallery and Insert Your Gallery – Follow the steps above to assign a gallery to your new pricelist and insert your gallery on a page or blog post.
- Fulfill Your Print Orders – Lastly, you must ensure that orders are fulfilled. NextGEN Gallery will collect the customer payment and send the full amount to the account you provided. It’s your responsibility to send orders to your chosen print lab and ensure they are correctly fulfilled and sent to customers.