# DecoNetwork Issues Unresolved!



## Mlabbas (Sep 12, 2011)

We're an established t-shirt retail business that has been planning our entry into online selling ever since we got our direct-to-garment machine last summer. We signed up with Deconetwork many months and have been working to go live since the beginning of the year. 

After getting through most issues (we hired a web-developer to do some nice make-up to the site), we are still facing critical problems that Deconetwork support have not been able to resolve. 

While using photoshop to create our own tshirt template, we've tried every combination of adjusting brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation, and failed to ever get the right results! We are facing three various problems every time we upload a template:

1) We would get a grey or red shirt for all the available colors (red, green, black, blue, yellow, etc) per shirt. Pic attached.

2) A bright shine would be visible on the shirt; giving it a fake/weird look. Pic attached. 

3) We can never get decent results for black shirts. It's always a light shade black (grey/silverish). 

We would HIGHLY appreciate any practical solution from the public as we've been going back and forth with DecoNetwork for many months!


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## blzpowr (Apr 16, 2011)

The shine looks like a lighting issue during original photography. We've had this happen in the past. A good pro photog should be able to compensate for that.

The other problem you mention, can't help. Perhaps Deconetwork can chime in or perhaps someone who is deep into deco.

Good luck.


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## headfirst (Jun 29, 2011)

What product are you using? Is that a custom product?

Deconetwork already has colors set for all of their pre-loaded products. If that's a custom product you need to create and upload a separate image for each color you are using.


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## YourLogoGear (Jul 5, 2011)

The auto-recolor option in Deco is not good. I agree with Patrick that you should upload a separate image for each color.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hi there,

The original image used makes a huge difference. You want to, as much as possible, reduce contrast in your original image and get as close to 50% grey as possible.

When making template images I use an exact 50% grey square in my photo software (such as Corel PHOTO-PAINT) and I keep t

Some tips:

1. Start with a mid-color product like a yellow, sky blue, pink etc. This gets a good 50% grey unlike a light color like white or dark color like navy or black. This usually requires over processing (too much contrast) which can get the affect you seem to be getting. See attached image Gildan_2000_Sky_1000.jpg

2. Cut out and place on a transparent background. Convert to grey scale then add a perfect 50% rectangle on a new layer. This will show you how far off your grey photo is to perfect 50% grey. See grey-001.png

3. Adjust the contrast right down. Usually the issue you reported is caused by too much contrast. You'll be surprised at the detail that still comes out even when the contrast is right down and it looks very flat when grey. Adjust the brightness as well the contrast so that together they come as close as possible to that grey rectangle you placed on the separate layer. See attached Gildan_2000_Sky_1000.psd which I've uploaded here: www.deconetwork.com/tmp/Gildan_2000_Sky_1000.psd (This forum didn't allow the file size so I had to upload there).

I've uploaded this PSD file to my test DecoNetwork website and I made three auto colors: Black, white, blue and red. You can see it here: Mlabbas - ACME Threads

I named the product the same as your user name.

You can see overall it has a pretty realistic view. The key is to get the contrast down really, really low. Just adjust the rightness to get the right color you want. I may have over brighten mine so the white is getting a little washed out.

All this said, nothing is better than a real image of the real color. But the trick to get the best recoloring effect is as close to 50% grey as possible and a very low contrast.

Hope this helps!

Brenden


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## Mlabbas (Sep 12, 2011)

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your responses. Patrick, great feedback. As you guys advised, we decided to upload a single image for each color due to the failure of DecoNetwork's auto-color generator. On DecoNetwork's online designer, the fourth option (most advanced) of uploading a single template that automatically generates all colors is somewhat useless due to poor results. We've adjusted the brightness/contrast/hue/saturation of the template for many months, as well as taking numerous high resolution photos of light colored shirts under different lighting, but DN never generated reasonable results. 

We'll keep you all posted on any progress..


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## KristineH (Jan 23, 2013)

I've had good luck with the upload your own template option. I've only done it for a few items, but then they were added to the catalog so I removed them.


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## Mlabbas (Sep 12, 2011)

Hey DecoNetwork,

We'd like to note that we have several pending messages that haven't been attended to for about a week; most of which are critical for our website launch. So, Mietek if you're out there.. please check out our many messages. 

Thank you!


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hey Bobby,

I'll get the team to check it out for you!


Cheers,
Brenden


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## LindaLittleHat (Oct 1, 2009)

Hey Deconetwork/Brenden,
We've been having issues as well f o r about a week now. Can't resolve our shipping connection to USPS. We received emails that our problem was fixed and it wasn't. More time lost. Why does it take two days to get a response?

We also don't understand why a customer has to provide their name and address in order to get the cost for shipping. I'm sure we will lose orders because of this. 

We We have been in test mode with issues being resolved slowly. We have a show next week and need the site live and working by then. Thanks (thetimesofyourlife.net)


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hi there,

Do you have a ticket number I can look up your support queries?

Shipping: We need to capture the users address for shipping as USPS requires an address in order to provide the accurate shipping cost.

I'll look into the support items you have open for you.


Brenden


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hi there,

I found your ticket 

The support team actually replied on July 12 and informed you that your USPS is not on a production server at USPS. It certainly was not an automated answer but a reply from our support team  

Usually when you signup with USPS they put you on a test server first. You need to contact USPS and ask them to put you on the LIVE server.

The support technicican provided a link for you to read how to do this. See: USPS live shipping | DecoNetwork

You can also test that your USPS account is not working by browsing to your DecoNetwork shipping settings: Manage Fulfilment > Settings > Shipping Methods and select "Add Live Shipping Method".

If you then scroll down to USPS you will see your USPS username and password. If you click "Test settings" it will tell you your USPS account does not have permission to access the USPS server. This is usually means your USPS username or password is not working, or your USPS account is not set to the production server by USPS. The instructions in the link about explain how you can configure this in USPS.

I've added these notes to your support ticket as well.

I hope this helps.


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## LindaLittleHat (Oct 1, 2009)

Thanks Brenden but I never received the reply. I just received your email and replied with my question about which URL to use, which has not been answered.

As for determining the shipping cost, I currently have a Zen shopping cart and it does not require the full address to determine the cost, only the zip code. The customer supplies the zip code in the cart before final check out. This is common with most ecommerce sites. I'm very concerned that we will lose orders if the customer is required to provide all their info, name, address, before knowing the total of their order. Zen is a free open source shopping cart, not nearly as sophisticated as deconetwork. Is there anyway that the coding cannot modified?

Thanks very much for tracking down my ticket. Please check my email regarding my URL question and advise on the shipping cost issue.


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## brenden (Dec 11, 2008)

Hi Linda,

I can see in our system that the support team has been replying so I suspect your notification emails must have been caught by your spam folder. You can at any time see the replies and progress of your support tickets by logging into the DecoNetwork help website. At the moment your last two tickets are assigned to you for your comment.

Have a great weekend!


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## headfirst (Jun 29, 2011)

LindaLittleHat said:


> As for determining the shipping cost, I currently have a Zen shopping cart and it does not require the full address to determine the cost, only the zip code. The customer supplies the zip code in the cart before final check out. This is common with most ecommerce sites. I'm very concerned that we will lose orders if the customer is required to provide all their info, name, address, before knowing the total of their order. Zen is a free open source shopping cart, not nearly as sophisticated as deconetwork. Is there anyway that the coding cannot modified?


Brenden, Can you answer her question? I'm curious about this as well.


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