» PurpleTrail Design Center

Design Your Own Invitations, Cards, Announcements and More

Why spend money on mass produced cards when you can design your own?  Friends and family will love getting one of a kind greeting cards, invitations, and announcements from you.  It’s easy to do with the PurpleTrail Design Center. You have so many creative tools at your disposal.  You can create the perfect design for your event or occasion.

What is the PurpleTrail Design Center?
With the PurpleTrail Design Center, you can choose from 5000 designs.  You can even start from scratch and create a truly unique card or invitation.  Whether you want to make your own bridal shower invitation, wedding invitation, birthday card, or birth announcements, the PurpleTrail Design Center is the place to do it.  With a library of embellishments, images, and editing tools, it’s easy to customize any of our existing designs or create your own.

Design Sizes
If you want to print your design (either at home or professionally) you have t size the following choices:  3.5 x 5, 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8.5 x 5.5, 5.25 x 5.25.  These cards can be portrait or landscape orientation.  When you view one of our print card designs you can see what size of card it has been designed for.  The size is listed in the card details.

If you would like a design to be changed to a different card type, you can do this by personalizing the card in the PurpleTrail Design Center.  After you open the card for personalization, click to change the design type.

Remember by changing the card size, the scaling of images and embellishments will also change.

Design Tools
Within the design center you can add photos, embellishments, frames, background colors and text.  All of these features are customizable.  Things can be rotated, flipped, cropped, resized, and you can even change the opacity them.  When creating PurpleTrail eVites, you can also add in special effects and music.  Check out our design tips article to help you get started.  You can also find lots of helpful hints at our FAQ page.

You can make your design as simple or complex as you like.  Your friends and family will love get such personal cards from you.  It always makes people feel special to know you made something for them and that you put thought and effort into it.

Thank you for your interest in adding your designs to the PurpleTrail community designs section of our website.  Unfortunately, this section is no longer available.  Thank you.

What type of photo formats are supported?

You can currently upload photos in .jpg, .gif and .png format.

How do I upload my photo to the Design Center?

Click on the Photos section in the left hand navigation menu.  Click on “Get Photos”

 In the pop up window click on “upload photos” in the upper right corner. If you are not logged in to your PurpleTrail account, you will be prompted to do so.

 Upon logging in, you can then browse your computer for the photo you want. You can upload 5 photos at a time.  Once you select your photos, click “Start Upload”.  Once uploaded, you can close the photo upload window.

You will see your photos in your left hand Photos navigation bar. Click and drag your photo to your design and customize it as needed. 

See “Do I need high resolution images?” for specific photo size requirements.

What does photo resolution mean?

All digital images are composed of pixels.  As a general rule, the more pixels an image contains, the better the picture quality.  A high resolution photo means that you have a high number of pixels.

It is possible on most digital cameras to select the resolution. Keep in mind that you can always reduce the size and resolution of your photo once it is taken, but you cannot add pixels back in. We recommend capturing your images at as high a resolution as possible, and then editing them to the size that you need.  Photos with very high resolution have very large file sizes, and therefore can take a very long time to upload on your computer.  Therefore, if you edit them on your computer with photo editing software to reduce the file size, they will be much easier to work with. 

Can I crop my photos?

Yes.  Using the PurpleTrail Design Center under the Images and Shapes tab, you can crop your photos with a circle or a square shape. 

Keep in mind that cropping a photo means that pixels are removed. Cropping a photo spreads a smaller number of pixels (since some were removed) over the same surface area. This is the reason you will sometimes see squares in your photo, or lines that aren’t smooth after a crop. Starting with more pixels, at a higher resolution, means there are more pixels to spread when you crop your photo.  Please be sure your image is of high enough resolution to support the amount of cropping that you want to do.  If it looks at all blurry or “pixelated” on the screen, it will look even more so in print.  If that is the case, it would be best to not crop the photo or choose a different photo with higher resolution.

Do I need to use high resolution images?

Yes, the images that you use need to be high resolution in order to view and print nicely.  Here are some rough guidelines to follow.  Please note that these are *minimum* resolution requirements.  You photos should be at least this resolution for the size indicated:

Size of photo when printed     –  minimum resolution required

              4×6 size photo           690 x 460 pixels

             5×7  size photo           805 x 575 pixels

             8×10 size photo           1150 x 920 pixels

Use an Existing Design

You can modify and personalize any design within PurpleTrail.  Just select the design you would like to use and then click the “Start Personalizing” button on the left of the design. 

 This will open the design in the PurpleTrail Design Center.  You can change any part of the design that you like and add your own photos and text.  When you have made all your changes, click “I’m Finished.” 

 Your design is then ready to be used for your online or printing needs. Continue on to “Next Step”

Start with a Blank Design

If you wish to start from scratch, you can use the PurpleTrail Design Center to create your own design using our library of thousands of backgrounds and embellishments.  You can even upload your own photos and images to use for the design. To get started, click on the “Make Your Own Custom Design”  at the bottom of any design gallery page and you will be directed to the PurpleTrail Design Center to get started.

What are the different design types?

Within the Design Center you can select the type of design you would like to create.  The choices are Online, Flat Card, Postcard,  Folded Card, Circle Card, Tri-Fold Card, and Quad-Fold Card.

Flat Cards, Postcards, and Folded Cards are available in the following sizes:

• 3.5 x 5, 4×6, 5.25x 5.25, 5×7, and 8.5 x 5.5

Circle Cards are available in

• 5.25

Tri-Fold Cards and Quad-Fold Cards are available in the following size:

• 4 x 5.5

Regular cards can be designed in portrait or landscape orientation. Tri-Fold cards and Quad-Fold cards can only be designed in a landscape orientation.  A flat card is one sided, a postcard is front and back, and a folded card has 4 sides to work with including the inside and back of the card. Both Tri-Fold cards and Quad-Fold Cards can be designed on the front and back. That means you have 6 and 8 panles (respectively) to fill with your creative ideas. You can change the design type as many times as you like before you order.  Note: changing the design type may result in the rescaling of design elements.

PurpleTrail Design Center Video Tour

Other design center resources….

• Change the Design Type

• Add Shapes and Images

• Add Text

• Add or Change Backgrounds