Overview

This guide helps you understand how to persist and share creative work using the CreativeEditor SDK (CE.SDK). Whether you’re building user-driven editors, automations, or backend publishing flows, CE.SDK gives you flexible tools to export, save, and publish projects.

CE.SDK supports multi-modal output, allowing you to export creative as:

• Static designs
• Print-ready PDFs
• Videos

All exporting and saving operations are handled entirely on the client. You don’t need a server to export files or save scenes, although you can easily integrate uploads or publishing workflows if needed.

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Export vs. Save: What’s the Difference?

Exporting creates a media file meant for consumption — like downloading a finalized PNG, uploading a video for YouTube, or printing a poster. Once exported, the file cannot be edited unless you reimport it as a new asset.

Saving preserves the entire editable scene, including layers, settings, and asset references. Saved scenes can be reloaded, edited, and exported again later.

Action	Purpose	Example
Export	Create final output	User downloads a social media asset as PNG
Save	Save editable project state	User saves a draft design to continue editing later

Ways to Export or Save

Using the UI

You can export and save directly through CE.SDK’s built-in UI, such as export buttons, menu items, or publish actions. This behavior is fully customizable — you can modify or extend the UI to fit your app’s specific needs.

Programmatically

You can trigger exports and saves silently through the API, ideal for background processes, automation workflows, or headless scenarios.

Supported Export Formats

Category	Supported Formats
Images	.png (with transparency), .jpeg, .webp, .tga
Video	.mp4 (H.264 or H.265 on supported platforms with limited transparency support)
Print	.pdf (supports underlayer printing and spot colors)
Scene	.scene (description of the scene without any assets)
Archive	.zip (fully self-contained archive that bundles the .scene file with all assets)

Export Options and Configuration

CE.SDK provides rich configuration options when exporting:

• Size and Resolution: Customize dimensions or use presets for different platforms.
• Format Selection: Choose from image, video, or document output.
• Compression: Optimize file size without compromising quality.
• Masks: Export with color masks if needed.
• Quality Settings: Fine-tune output quality based on your requirements.

You can also programmatically create multiple export outputs for different use cases (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, YouTube) from the same design.

Partial Export and Selective Export

CE.SDK supports exporting parts of a project instead of the full scene:

• Selected Layers/Blocks Export: Export only selected layers or blocks.

This flexibility is useful for scenarios like asset slicing, batch creation, or modular content publishing.

Pre-Export Validation

Before exporting, you can run validation checks to ensure quality and compliance:

• NSFW Detection: Flag potentially inappropriate content.
• Resolution Checks: Ensure minimum export dimensions are met.
• Content Bounds Check: Detect elements that extend beyond the visible canvas (this is not available out-of-the-box, but can be achieved with our APIs).

You can hook into the export flow to run your own validation logic before completing an export.

Saving a Scene for Future Editing

When saving an editable scene, your approach may vary depending on your use case — especially when working with templates. In most scenarios, the recommended format is to save the scene as an Archive. This bundles the entire scene along with all used assets into a self-contained file that can be loaded without requiring access to external asset URLs. This is ideal when portability or offline availability is important.

Alternatively, you can save the scene as a string. This format references assets by URL and is only suitable if those asset URLs will be reachable wherever the scene is later used — such as when reloading in a consistent cloud environment.

You have several options when storing saved scenes:

• Local Save: Store in local browser storage or download as a file.
• Backend Save: Upload the archive or string to your server.
• Cloud Storage Save: Integrate with services like AWS S3, GCP Storage, etc.

Saved scenes preserve:

• Layer structure
• Applied effects
• Asset references
• Variable data (e.g., dynamic fields for templates)

Pros and Cons:

Strategy	Pros	Cons
Archive	Fully self-contained and portable	Larger file size
String	Smaller file size, easy to inspect	Requires externally reachable asset URLs
Local Save	Fast, no backend needed	Risk of loss on browser reset
Backend Save	Centralized, enables user sessions	Requires server integration
Cloud Storage Save	Scalable, ideal for distributed environments	Slightly more complex to set up