Knowledge Base & Forums/Studiometry Knowledge Base/Invoice Templates & Report Templates
Add My Company Logo to an Invoice/Report Template
Oranged Support
posted this on July 05, 2011 02:40 pm
Studiometry lets you completely customize your invoice and report templates, including the ability to add your company logo. The method for adding your logo depends on the type of template you're creating.
Adding your logo to a Visual Template
To add your logo to a WYSIWYG template, do the following:
- Go to Studiometry's preferences window > Templates section.
- Double-click your visual template to bring up the template editor.
- Drag-and-drop a compatible image file (png, jpg, gif, etc) directly into the template window.
- Position your logo on the template by dragging it to the desired position.
- Close the template editor window and save the invoice template.
Another method of adding a picture to a visual template: you can click the "New Picture" toolbar button, and select an image file from your disk by selecting the item and clicking on the Image Well in the Picture section of the properties editor.
Adding your logo to a Code-Based Template
Code-based templates are more complicated to set up than the visual templates and are recommended only for advanced users. If you're using a code-based Invoice or Report template, you can add your logo by doing the following:
- First, make sure you have a copy of your logo stored on your web server.
- Go to Studiometry's preferences window > Templates section.
- Double-click your code-based template from the list to bring up the code editor.
- Add the HTML tag for an image to your template in the desired location, linking to your logo on your website. An example would be: <img src="http://www.yoursite.com/yourlogo.jpg">
- Save the invoice template.
This template will now link to the external logo every time it is displayed. This will work in emails, browsers, etc.
Comments
Method one has the unfortunate side effect of turning a nice sharp vector into soft pixels. Not really acceptable for a design studio. Another option I am exploring is to use the PDF background. Incorporating your logo into the background means it retains its vector integrity when emailed. Much nicer.
BUT
The damn PDF background changes its position depending on if you are emailing, printing or creating a PDF!!!!!! ARRRRGGHHHHHH!!!!!
Emailing works, the others are out by up to 15 mm, key elements are off the page!
Additional to the above post. Instead of printing the estimate which was breaking the design, exporting the report as a pdf seems to work fine. An extra step but maybe a useful workaround.
This KB article should help you add higher resolution images to your templates:
http://support.oranged.net/entries/20262691-add-high-resolution-ima...
I had read that article and tried it for myself – the results are still sub par. Crumbly letter forms and jagged diagonals. This is my company brand from a company that specialises in company brands. High res jpgs are very poor substitutes for vectors when dealing with flat tones and high contrast graphical content.
When it comes to flat tones nothing beats the light kilobyte weight and razor sharp (at any scale) display of a vector in a pdf. It is why vectors are used by graphic designers. It is important this is understood by Oranged software so we may obtain professional looking pdf output from Studiometry. Not all logos are full colour continuous tone illustrations suited to the jpg format.
PDF VECTOR LOGO TIP:
Make a typeface called "Logo" and add your logo to it. Then it is possible to add your logo to any page (including Studiometry) by typing the correct character in "Logo" font, very cool. (For administration reasons I have not been able to do this on my own installation of Studiometry.)
You can add vectors directly to the template itself, using the built in shape objects as well as text. We're looking at the possibility of additional vector graphic capabilities for a future version of Studiometry, but as of right now we can only recommend either using standard text/shapes, or the high-res graphics mentioned before.
Additional vector graphics import capabilities would be a great help. I have migrated to Studiometry from Traffic Office Manager, a program that had been in solid use in the studio from 1998 without upgrades and it was able to handle vector graphics. I can't settle for less and know from my clients requests for word templates they don't like their logo soft either.
So if I am correct, currently If you want to have a vector logo in your template there are three options in Studiometry:
1) Import it as part of your Template background PDF
2) Create a font and use it as a text element (only good for single colour logos)
3) Redraw it using Studiometry shape tools and text.