Cricut Design Space updates

December and January saw some updates to Design Space for Desktop.

December's update (v7.23) included a new way that you work with fonts as well as an expansion to Collections. 

You'll find my overview of those changes here: 

You'll find the full release notes for this update here: https://help.cricut.com/hc/en-us/articles/10630260699927-NEW-Release-Notes-2022-12-12

 
Today's update (v7.25) fixed the problem of small images being difficult to be selected due to the bounding box handles getting in the way. 

This update makes it easier to move small images/text around the canvas by turning off the bounding boxes when they are so close that they would touch. When the bounding boxes are visible on small images/text it makes it difficult to hit that sweet spot in the middle of the image and it's resized or rotated in error.

Without the bounding boxes the tiny images are easy to select and move around your canvas. Turning the bounding boxes back on is as easy as clicking the zoom in button at the bottom of the canvas.

You will see a message at the bottom of your canvas the first three times you make an image small enough to remove the bounding boxes. After that you'll no longer see that message.

You'll find the complete release notes for this update here:  https://help.cricut.com/hc/en-us/articles/11470916934039-NEW-Release-Notes-2023-01-17

Happy crafting!  ♥

CRICUT: Design Space iOS app update

Cricut have just released an update to the Design Space iOS app.

This update allows you to move images between mats while you're at the cut preview screen.  That means you don't have to go back to the design screen to move your images to a different cutting mat.

In this image below you can see that I have seven hearts on the canvas.

 

When I click "Send to Mat" the images are placed on two separate mats with four hearts on one mat and three on the other.

But I know that I can fit five on one mat and two on the other thereby saving some of my cardstock.

If I tap on one of the hearts on the second mat you will see 3 dots appear in the top left corner of that image.

 

When I click on those dots a menu appears with two options.

 

I tap on the Move to another Mat option and this box appears.

  

I click on Mat 1 and that heart will be moved to that mat. The heart I moved has been placed on top of one of the other hearts and has a yellow border around it.

 

I can tap on that heart and drag it into the middle of the mat.

 

Now with that image still selected I can use the rotate handle to turn it 180deg.

  

 

Adjust the position of the hearts as needed so that none of them have a yellow border. (That indicates that they are touching).

You also have the option of hiding images on the cut screen. This is useful if you want to recut just some of the images on a mat. 

Tap on the three dots then tap Hide Selected. 

 

To unhide an image tap the "Hidden" button below the mat and select the images you wish to unhide. 

 

You have the option of moving images to a new mat. It's great if you want to change the colour of some of your images at the last minute. 

Just select the Create New Mat option at this screen. 

 

You can find more information on this great new feature here: http://help.cricut.com/help/move-hide-iOS

Happy crafting!  ♥

CRICUT: Design Space 3 Beta Previews

You might have heard that a new version of Design Space is currently undergoing Beta testing.

Today I am authorised to show you some previews of some of the upcoming changes.

Design Space 3 is much easier to navigate than the current version. You're going to find it much more responsive in many ways.  I have very slow internet and DS3 runs so much faster for me than DS2.

Here's some of the changes you can expect to see.

• First, the Edit Panel has been moved to the top of the screen. This means that it is always available. 

No more moving between the Edit Panel and the Layers Panel.

• The Layers Panel has had a slight makeover.  You'll see a coloured dot on each layer to indicate the selected colour of that layer.
  
• And if you click on one of the layers you can instantly see which colours are currently being used in that project. No more having to remember which colours you used. 

• Uploading file is so much faster now! And to help with that there's now a Drag & Drop feature. Just click on a file from your computer and drag it to the Design Space upload screen and drop it! 

• The font preview screen has been enlarged. Now it's super easy to see what a font looks like.  

• DS3 is written in HTML instead of Adobe Flash.  Shockwave crashes are a thing of the past. 

• The Isolate letters feature has been changed to Ungroup to Letters.  Once you have ungrouped your text to letters you can still edit that text and change fonts on individual letters. 

• You can also ungroup multiple lines of text into individual lines.  This is much quicker than creating a text box for different lines of text. 

• Finding your saved projects is easy. Either click on the My Projects button on the canvas or click on the Projects button and select it from the Categories list. 

• Speaking of your projects - they now have a preview! You don't have to guess what they look like anymore. 

• Sometimes you realise you need to move images around on a mat after you've started cutting. Now you can!  Just click on the mat you want to change then click Edit Mat.

There's a lot to love about Design Space 3.  There's currently no indication of when it will be released and I can't give you any more details of the features yet. But from a performance point of view it's certainly going to be worth the wait!

Happy crafting!  ♥

CRICUT: What's new in Design Space 2 - Part 4

More on searching for images.

The updates to the Image search functions in Design Space show that Cricut has been paying attention to our feedback. Let's go into the image search feature in more depth.

As I showed earlier, the Insert Images screen has had a major face lift.
More images can be viewed on screen and we can now zoom that screen to see the images in more detail.

Currently when you hover your mouse over an image in Design Space, after a few seconds you would see a larger preview of the image. And sometimes you would get a preview of an image that you didn't actually want.

In the image below my mouse is hovering over the top left image, but the preview is showing the Halloween Window cling image instead of the Sweetest Wishes image

That problem has now been fixed.

Now when you hover over an image you won't see a larger preview. That's because you can use the zoom button to make all your images larger. So no need for a larger preview.

But what about the information that was contained in the preview? Previously you would see the image name, the image number, which image set (cartridge) it came from and whether it was a purchased, subscribed or free image. It also indicated whether it was a print ready image (for Print then Cut.)

That information hasn't disappeared!

 

The image still has a printer icon if it's a print ready image. But it also shows the price of the image if you don't own it.

In the bottom right of the image you will see an information icon (the circled i). When you click that icon you will see the other information about the image.

There you'll see the Image name, number and image set. And you can purchase that image from right there.

Just click the (i) again to change back to the image preview.

To insert an image just click on it (you'll see a green check mark).

It will be added to the image queue at the bottom of the image screen. Click Insert Images to add it to your canvas.

Searching:

Searching for images is easy! And you can search by All Images, Categories or Cartridges.

All Images

Just type your keyword in the search box and press Enter.

The images will appear on screen and the search box will tell you how many results there were.

In this case there were 80 results for the keyword "cow". (As a comparison there were 1092 results for the keyword "bird"!) ☺

You can filter those results by clicking on the funnel in the top right corner of the screen. If you just want to see results for images that are part of the subscription then check the subscription box. Now you will see that there are 53 results.

If you're looking for a certain type of image just check those boxes. I've selected 3D Objects, Borders, Card & Envelopes and Phrases and now have 21 images.

Across the top of the images you will see a box for each type of image it searched for. You can click the X on any of those boxes to remove those results.

You can still search for images using the image number if you have it. Just type the image number including the #M in the search box. Don't know what the images number are all about? You can find out in this post!

Categories

Click on Categories then select one of the listed categories to search from. You can still narrow your search by typing in a keyword. And you can have DS only search by Ownership, Type or by Layers. Here I've searched for golf images in the Father's Day category.

Cartridges

Clicking on Cartridges will show you all the available cartridges in alphabetical order. (Yay!)

If you are not logged in be aware that some cartridges (such as Creative Memories and Close to My Heart) won't appear. If you own those cartridges you must make sure you are logged in to see them.

Click on any of the the images or on the "View all... images" box to open that cartridge.

Like the cartridge names, the images are now also in alphabetical order.

Here's some of the images from the Baby Shower cartridge.

The images in order are Airplane, Baby, Baby Shower, Baby Tree, Banner, Bird.... and so on.

To search for a particular type of image within a cartridge you can use the keyword search eg. Card.

More searching hints

Looking for cartridges with "Card" in the name? Just type "card" into the search box, and select the Cartridges option.

Looking for an envelope?

Select All Images, type envelope in the search box and... hello 818 images! 

Remember, just click on the (i) on any image to see which cartridge it comes from.  

Still to come: Upload Images, Add Text and setting a Canvas.

Happy crafting!  ♥

This website and its posts may contain affiliate links. If you purchase a product using the link I may receive a small commission.

I only participate in affiliate programs for products that I use and love.

Using the link is totally optional! If you don't wish to purchase through the link, you can go directly to the website and purchase from their shop. Please note there is no price difference to you between using the affiliate link and purchasing direct from the website. ☺

Any commission I receive is used to offset the costs of maintaining this website (domain fees etc) and file/photo storage fees for files that I share with my readers. It also goes towards the cost of giveaways and postage at Cricut Lovers Guide to Design Space Facebook group. 

I have affiliates with Cricut.com, MightyDeals and InLinkz ♥

CRICUT: What's new in Design Space 2 - part 3

Continuing on with the February 2015 changes to Design Space.

The Layers, Edit, Sync and Canvas panels

Not much has changed with these panels other than that you can undock and dock them.

Layers

You can still open and close layers by clicking on the down arrow next to the layer name. (Very useful if there's a lot of pieces in a layer - you don't have to scroll down as far if you're looking for a layer that's right at the bottom...)  Click on the arrow again to reopen the layer.

A handy little addition here is the ability to Tab between the layers. Click on one of the layer names and press the Tab key on your keyboard. Each time you press Tab it will move down a layer. Use Shift+Tab to move backwards. ☺

And of course you still click on the scissor icon to change between Cut, Write, Score and Print.

Edit

The Edit box hasn't changed much.

The Width & Height boxes still round up/down to two decimal places. (I'd really like to see 3 decimal places for when I'm using 1/8" measurements.)

The Rotate dial from the old version doesn't appear in the new version. I actually found it useful, but I guess a lot of people didn't.

And finally something that I've been hoping for ever since Design Space was released... You can now tab between the Height & Width boxes and the X & Y boxes! It's something small but makes such a difference!


Sync:

There's no change to how things work in the Sync box. ☺

Canvas:

It looks like the canvas options are working much better now. The sizes are able to be changed and those changes are saved!

Happy crafting!  ♥

This website and its posts may contain affiliate links. If you purchase a product using the link I may receive a small commission.

I only participate in affiliate programs for products that I use and love.

Using the link is totally optional! If you don't wish to purchase through the link, you can go directly to the website and purchase from their shop. Please note there is no price difference to you between using the affiliate link and purchasing direct from the website. ☺

Any commission I receive is used to offset the costs of maintaining this website (domain fees etc) and file/photo storage fees for files that I share with my readers. It also goes towards the cost of giveaways and postage at Cricut Lovers Guide to Design Space Facebook group. 

I have affiliates with Cricut.com, MightyDeals and InLinkz ♥