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Orilami

POD Design Checker: before and after

An illustration with sample files; your own files show their own results.

Before3 designs that would print badly

  • Blurry, too few pixels

  • White box around it

  • Outside the safe zone

AfterThe same designs, print-ready

  • Sharp at 300 DPI

  • Transparent PNG, no box

  • Inside the safe zone

POD Design Checker: DPI, Bleed and Size Check for Print-on-Demand

A print pre-flight tool for print-on-demand designers. Drop in up to 50 designs and it checks each one against a platform's real specs (Merch by Amazon, Printify, Printful, posters, mugs, phone cases, KDP covers) for resolution, safe margins, bleed, transparency and CMYK gamut, then exports print-ready files. Every pixel stays on your machine.

What it measures

Resolution is read from your file's real pixel size divided by the product's physical print size, giving the effective DPI along the limiting axis: the number the printer sees. Safe-margin checks trace your artwork's actual content and test whether it clears the safe zone. Transparency scans the alpha channel for a solid background and for the soft-edge “halo” that dirties a cut-out.

Runs in your browser

Decoding, alpha scanning, background removal, DPI compositing and DPI stamping run locally, with the heavy pixel work in a Web Worker so the batch stays responsive. Your artwork is never uploaded, which matters when designs are your inventory. Exports are built and zipped in the browser too.

Frequently asked questions

Why do print-on-demand uploads get rejected?
Usually resolution below the platform's minimum DPI at print size, artwork outside the safe area or missing bleed, unflattened transparency, or colours CMYK ink cannot reproduce. Each is a separate check here, so the report names the actual blocker.
What DPI do I need for print-on-demand?
Most platforms want 300 DPI at the final printed size; some apparel printers accept 150. The check is your pixel size against the physical size: a 4000×4000 design is 300 DPI at 13.3 inches but only 150 DPI at 26.6 inches.
Does it convert my design to CMYK?
No, and it says so. It flags colours, especially very saturated RGB values, that will shift when a printer converts them, so you can adjust first. A true conversion needs the printer's own ICC profile.
How many designs can I check at once?
Up to 50 in one batch. Analysis runs on a downscaled copy to stay fast and inside browser memory; the export is made from your full-resolution file.
Which platforms is it aimed at?
Merch by Amazon, Printify, Printful and Kindle Direct Publishing. The checks (DPI, safe area, bleed, transparency, colour) apply to any print vendor's requirements.
Are my designs uploaded anywhere?
No. Decode, analysis, background purge, resample, PNG/PDF export and the ZIP all happen on your device. Nothing leaves the browser.
Does the DPI booster add detail?
No. It resamples to the platform's target pixel size with high-quality interpolation but cannot invent detail that isn't in the source, so a low-res file looks smoother but stays soft. The resolution warning says so up front.
Is the PDF export vector?
The trim and bleed crop marks are vector; the artwork is the raster you uploaded, placed at the exact physical size and target DPI. It is a print-ready PDF with real bleed, not a vectorisation.
Which file formats can I feed it?
PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF and BMP natively, plus TIFF, HEIC/HEIF, SVG and PDF (page one) via in-browser decoders.
More questions about Orilami

POD Design Checker at a glance

Key facts about POD Design Checker: where it runs, what it costs, what it accepts and produces, and its limits.
Where it runsEntirely in your browser. Files are never uploaded.
Cost15 tokens per design (about $0.15 at the base rate); larger batches cost less per design: 6–10 take 10% off the total, rising to 30% off at 41–50
AcceptsPNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF, HEIC/HEIF, SVG, PDF
ProducesA per-design pass/fail report, plus print-ready PNG with the correct DPI written in and PDF exports; batches download as a ZIP.
BatchUp to 50 files per run.
Account neededOnly to spend tokens. Browsing and previewing are free.
What it does not doThe colour check is a heuristic warning about colours that print badly, not a colour-managed CMYK conversion with an ICC profile.