Web-based printing service providers typically provide their customers with the ability to access the service provider's web site, view product templates provided by the service provider, and enter information to create a customized markup language document. For customers who are unable or unwilling to complete a custom product design online without assistance, some service providers provide their customers with access to service representatives who will give advice to the customer or perform some or all of the product design for the customer.
In creating a customized product, many customers desire to incorporate a personal photograph, company logo, or other custom image content into the product design. To support and facilitate this, web-based printing service providers typically provide tools allowing customers to readily upload images to the service provider's web site servers for use by the customer or by the service provider's design representative in creating the customer's product design. After an image has been uploaded, however, the subsequent process of properly sizing and positioning the image into the custom design is generally relatively slow and cumbersome. In many cases, the customer's image is initially simply dropped by the system in a default location relative to the design being prepared and at a default size relative to the rest of the elements of the product design and must then be manually resized and/or repositioned to a desired size and location in the design. In addition to requiring various manual steps to prepare the image, some image sizing and positioning steps fail to take precautions to prevent the accidental introduction of errors into the customer's image, such as an undesired distortion or cropping of a photograph or company logo.
There is, therefore, a need for a novel and flexible system that facilitates the rapid incorporation of images into custom electronic product designs while reducing the incidence of inadvertent and undesirable changes to the image during the incorporation process.