PRINT4u.art

Dev building Print4u 👕 Custom streetwear, designed with AI. Sharing every design, sale & mistake along the way. 📍Vancouver

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

3/ Last, the safety checks. As you resize, the studio works out the real DPI and warns you below 150.

Preview on product then shows a real @printful mockup before you pay.

Tomorrow: checkout, and why I never charge a guessed price.

Try the design page: https://t.co/NbiyJqxOao

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

Day 5 of building PRINT4u in public.

The hardest screen I’ve built: placing a design on a product.

The print area you see isn’t a guess. It comes from @printful’s own templates for that exact product and print method, so what you place is what gets printed. 🧵

#BuildInPublic

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

1/ I started in January with a Konva canvas. It’s gone now.

In September, during the redesign, I took it out, and today the art is plain HTML sitting on top of the product photo. You drag it, or nudge it with the arrow keys.

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

2/ My editor thinks in scale and offset, but Printful wants a pixel rectangle.

I keep only the rectangle, and work out the slider and drag positions from it. Two copies of the same fact drift.

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

@ntnwlc @Printful Thanks! It really did pay off.

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

Day 4 of building PRINT4u in public.

My first commit (Aug 2025) wasn't the AI. It was the @printful API integration.

I wanted to move fast, so I went straight to their API (v2) and pulled in real products, categories and prices.

Everything else came after. 🧵

#BuildInPublic

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

@Printful Thank you so much for updating the API v2 documentation. It made building this a lot easier 🙌
https://t.co/t5DDV63BYy

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

@Mr_Indie_Hacker @Printful Agree 100%, and I had to fix this later. Everyone’s in a different place, so a shopper in the US can’t always get what someone in Europe, Japan or Mexico can.

I’ll explain what I did soon. Small spoiler: @vercel helped.

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

@mathiasvrb @Printful 100%. Once the API was in, I could see what was actually available. I started with a small catalog, then fetched only the products I wanted, and that showed me what belonged in the project.

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

@Printful 2/ Today @Printful still runs the backbone: the product catalog, which countries we ship to, delivery estimates for every variant, and shipping updates sent back to the app.

Tomorrow: the design studio, where you place the art on the product.

Try it: https://t.co/hiuySOfPdj

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

1/ Why @printful first? Their API v2 gave me a real catalog from day one, and it has a mockup generator: send a product + a design, get back a picture of the real thing.
I wired that in later, once I had a design canvas.

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

@kaiargus Partly. Text was a big part of it, since so many designs have words in them. The transparent PNG sealed it 💯

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

Day 3 of building PRINT4u in public.

The AI model changed a bunch of times. I was looking for the one whose designs print well on any product. But I started with tees.

Flux Schnell, Recraft... I tried a bunch, here and there.

And finally, Ideogram V3 won. 🧵

#buildinpublic

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

@CleanFix_Dev Two things: the text stayed readable, and it returns a transparent PNG, so there's no box around the art to clean up. That took us from two calls to one. For uploads we use FLUX Kontext to restyle and Bria to cut out the background, and you choose whether to keep it.

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

Neither yet. At first we made two calls: generate the art, then cut out the background. Then we looked at what people need most, a design that prints clean with no box around it, so @ideogram_ai's transparent PNG goes straight to @printful in one step. The studio warns you below 150 DPI. What did you use, upscaling or vectorizing?

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

@aksenHQ Yes, and mugs actually came out better than tees. On fabric the result depends a lot on the print type (DTG, DTF, embroidery). Mugs were the easy win 💯

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

2/ Then I added a second mode: upload a photo. FLUX.1 Kontext restyles it (cartoon, 3D, anime), and Bria cuts out the background so it prints clean.

Tomorrow: back to my very first commit.

Try it: https://t.co/hiuySOfPdj

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

1/ Ideogram V3 can return a transparent PNG. No box around the art, nothing to clean up. Just the design, ready to print.

Recraft gave me WebP files, and Printful doesn’t accept WebP for printing.

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

2/ 💳 Payment: Stripe, what I always use. The easiest pick.

🎨 AI art: started with Replicate, moved to https://t.co/M5ZvpWlj8n because it cost much less. The AI model changed too.

Tomorrow: why.

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

Day 2 of building PRINT4u in public.

The first question wasn’t design. It was: how can one person place one order?

That takes 4 pieces. Before writing any code, I researched who would handle each one:

🖨️ printing + shipping
🎨 AI art
💳 payment
🗄️ where orders live

#buildinpublic

[PRINT4u.art @print4u_art]

1/ 🖨️ Printing + shipping: I’m a developer, so I didn’t reinvent the wheel. Printful won: clear API docs, and right after signing up I had an API key.

🗄️ Bonus: Printful keeps every order, so the MVP didn’t need its own database yet.
#Printful