Merchant Order Capture

When a customer adds a personalized product to the cart, the app automatically captures a preview image of the personalized product and attaches it to the BigCommerce order line item.

How capture works

At the moment the customer clicks “Add to Cart”:

1. The selection handles (drag border, resize corner squares, rotation handle) are temporarily hidden from the canvas
2. The Personalizer canvas and the product image are combined together into a single image
3. The handles are immediately restored on the canvas so the customer’s live preview is unaffected
4. The image is saved to secure cloud storage.
5. The image is attached to the order as a hidden field that was automatically set up when the option set was applied to the product.

The entire process runs in the background and does not delay the cart submission. If any step fails (upload error, network issue), the add-to-cart proceeds normally without a design link — the order still goes through.

Dedicated field per personalized element

For each element that has Personalizer enabled, the app automatically sets up a hidden field on the product named [Element label] - Personalized Design. This field:

• Is invisible on the storefront — the app’s storefront script prevents it from rendering as a customer-facing input
• Accepts a link to the image as its value on add-to-cart
• Appears on the BigCommerce order line item as a modifier value, just like any other product option

Because it is a line-item modifier (not a cart-wide customer note), the design link is attached directly to the specific product that was personalized — even when a customer has multiple personalized products in the same cart.

Where to find the captured image

In your BigCommerce admin:

1. Go to Orders → click on the order
2. On the order line item, look for the modifier named [Your element label] - Personalized Design
3. The value is a link to the image — click it to open the preview image in a new tab

What the captured image shows

The image shows the product with the customer’s personalization overlaid exactly as it appeared at the time of add-to-cart:

• Product image as the background
• All text layers with the customer’s typed text, in the correct font, color, size, position, and curve
• Any color or image overlays
• Position reflects where the customer moved or resized the layers (if drag/resize was enabled)

The selection handles (blue dashed border, corner resize squares, rotation handle) are not included in the saved image. They are visible to the customer on the live preview but are hidden before the image is taken, so the captured design is clean.

Important notes

Best-effort only

Capture failure never blocks the cart. If the image fails to upload, the order is still placed — the field value will simply be empty. This is intentional: a failed image capture should never prevent a customer from completing their purchase.

Image retention

Preview images are stored indefinitely by default. If you need images to be deleted after a certain time, contact support.

If product images show as grey in captured designs

If your product images are hosted through BigCommerce (the standard setup), this will never happen. If you use a separate image hosting service that restricts external access, the captured design image may show a grey background instead of the product photo — though the customer’s personalization (text, colors, uploaded images) will still appear correctly. Contact support if you see this issue.