Before embarking on a new venture, it is usually wise to outline your objectives. This is much more important when it comes to design work and prints. After all, you don’t want to make hundreds of things only to find that they don’t look quite right when you hold them in your hands. That’s where Mockups come in handy.

Mockups help ecommerce stores avoid costly mistakes, and a well-designed mockup also increases their sales. So, online stores always need people who can create attractive mockups.

You can get a job as a mockup specialist if you learn Photoshop by taking Adobe Photoshop courses and improve your mockup making skills.

In this lesson, we’ll show you how to create a mockup, showing you how to create a product mockup in Photoshop so you can quickly get started with your own designs.

What exactly is a mockup?

Think of a mockup as a simulation of your design on the surface or material it will appear on. A digital mockup is essentially a photo or graphic representation of the finished product with the design superimposed on it to look like it was printed on the product.

Mockups are often used by product-based companies. They are an excellent tool for pitching new concepts or simply brainstorming what a new design would look like in real life.

Advantages of test models

The best thing about this is the low overhead. If you’re just working with one or two designs and are confident they will turn out well, ordering one or two sample shirts or mugs directly may be cheaper.

Mockups are also widely used in customer-facing industries, e.g. graphic design agencies, as well as website and app development. A mockup allows you, the designer, to show a client what their final designs would look like on a digital platform without investing time and money building them. This allows the client to make adjustments or changes before starting construction, and it allows you to see your vision come to life before going too far into the project.

Mockups are used in almost every industry that requires some sort of design element. For example, engineers use mockups in collaboration with architects and scientists to develop advanced technologies or modes of transport. Mockups are often used to evaluate finer aspects before moving on to the final production process.

Finally, when learning how to create a mockup, always ask yourself: does this accurately represent the final product?

Create a Photoshop mockup

There are countless ways to incorporate mockups into your own work. However, let’s be a little more precise. In this article, we’ll show you how to use Photoshop to turn a hand-drawn design into a custom mockup.

1. Find excellent photos

When you’re trying to present your work in the greatest possible light, you’ll want to use high-quality images for your mockups. There are numerous websites that offer stock photos of what you are creating, including:

Unsplash is great (and used by a lot of designers) because all of their photos are copyright free, meaning you don’t have to pay or credit the photographer to use the image. Paid services like Getty Photographs and iStock are other viable solutions, but can get expensive if you need a large selection of images.

1. Preparing your artwork

Before learning how to create a mockup for a Photoshop product, it’s critical to prepare your image.

Select your base for your mockup. Create a square or rectangle with the “Selection” tool that covers the area of ​​the photo where you want your design to appear. In this lesson, we’ll grab a square large enough to cover the entire bed in the picture.

Create a compound shape of this square in Adobe Illustrator. This will give you the correct dimensions for your design to completely fill the object in the mockup image.

Fill your pattern or artwork and export it with the “Asset Export” function and the JPEG100 format with baseline, optimized and anti-alias art optimization enabled. This is necessary to ensure that your design does not contain white lines and that it is saved as one continuous pattern for use in your mockup.

3. Import into Photoshop

After you’ve completed your artwork, you need to prepare your mockup image. Find the area of ​​the image where you want to place your artwork and use the “Magnetic Lasso” tool to mark that area.

Drag your new JPEG image into the designated area (enough so that the box covers everything you want the design to highlight) and choose “Convert to Smart Object” from the Pattern Layer panel.

From here, use the “Select” and “Load Selection” menus to mark an object with the lasso. Click on the small rectangle with the circle and your design will automatically match the item.

Don’t worry if it seems a little flat at first. To correct this, choose the layer mask of the image and change the blending mode from “Normal” to “Multiply”. This allows the design to blend more naturally with your chosen mockup object.

4. Adjust the perspective

If you’re working with a perspective-based product, the design needs to be tweaked to keep it from looking too flat.

For example, if you study how to create a mockup for a t-shirt in Photoshop, the perspective of the design will vary significantly based on the overall image of the mockup. A flat shirt without a model or a shirt on a person looking straight ahead will have a different look than a more “movable” mockup in which the model is engaged in an activity, creating lines or creases on the shirt.

As with the previous step, use the “Magnetic Lasso” tool to choose the part of the mockup image where you want the design to appear and drag it into Photoshop.

Drag this over the pattern area by clicking “Edit” > “Warp Perspective”. In the top panel, select “Warp” and then “Multiply” on the layer. You can then drag the corners of the design until you get the perspective you want.

Conclusion

The e-commerce industry is evolving rapidly as more people access the internet in different parts of the world. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are moving into the eCommerce space. This allows them to expand their reach to consumers while remaining competitive.

Consumer experiences in eCommerce stores have clearly improved through:

The absence of the restrictions associated with physical presence and interaction all contribute to consumers’ desire to shop online.

The average wage of a Photoshop designer is around Rs 3 lakhs, and it is expected to increase due to the growth of e-commerce.

Whether you are a business or a consumer, eCommerce offers many benefits.

Product mockups are very important for any business to show their customers what they would get when they place an order.