Image, sticker, background, and mask placeholders

The four non-text placeholder types — what they do, when to use each.

Text aside, Pixel Wrangler ships four placeholder types. Each does a specific job. Mix them inside one template.

Image placeholders

The customer uploads a photo. The most common placeholder type — names, dates, faces, pets.

  • Upload formats: JPG, PNG, WebP
  • Max file size: 10 MB
  • Customer controls: drag, resize, rotate, fill within the bounding box

The bounding box you draw on the canvas defines where the upload can land. If you want the image cropped to a circle (a profile-pic style product), pair the image placeholder with a mask on the same layer.

If the upload is lower resolution than your print requires, the customer gets a soft warning before checkout. They can keep going — we don't block the purchase — but the warning surfaces print-quality problems before they become refund requests.

Stickers

Pre-set decorative elements the customer toggles on. Useful for repeatable accents — hearts on a card, stars on a birthday product, a brand crest on a uniform.

  • You upload the sticker assets once.
  • Customers click to add, click again to remove.
  • Customers can drag, resize, and rotate stickers if you allow it (per-sticker setting).

Stickers are your artwork the customer can place. Image placeholders are artwork the customer brings.

Backgrounds

The base layer that sits behind everything else. Two flavours:

  • Solid colour background — pick a palette of colours, customer picks one.
  • Image background — pick a set of images, customer picks one.

One background per template side. If you want layered decorative images, use stickers instead.

If you don't set any background options, the canvas falls back to your base image — the blank product photo. For many products that's the right call. The blank is the background.

Masks

Overlays that clip uploaded artwork into a shape. Pair a mask with an image placeholder for circles, stars, hearts, brand-shaped frames — anything you can express as a transparent PNG cutout.

  • Masks render over the image placeholder.
  • The opaque part of the mask hides; the transparent part reveals the image underneath.
  • Stack masks if you want a frame + inner shape on the same image.

Use a mask when the customer's photo needs to fit a non-rectangular product area — phone cases, locket-style necklaces, holiday ornaments.

How layers stack

Every placeholder lives on a layer. Layers stack bottom-to-top:

  1. Background (always bottom)
  2. Image placeholders
  3. Masks (above the image they clip)
  4. Stickers
  5. Text placeholders (usually on top)

Drag layers in the builder to reorder. The customer's live preview reflects the layer order exactly as the print file will render it.

What's next

Templates that ship serious money usually combine all four. See Templates 101 for how the pieces fit, then Sides and output files for multi-sided products.