Create Custom Photoshop Mockups for Realistic Design Presentations

Photoshop mockups allow you to take your design and put it into a real-life scenario to make it look more realistic and to show an example of how something could be used. In a previous video, I showed you how you can find Photoshop mockups that other people made. You can go online, download them for free, or some of them are paid.

But what about if you want to make your own? Let's say you have your own photo that you want to put your design into, or you found a stock photo that you went and downloaded, like this one for example. And I want to put my magazine design into this photo to make it look like it's actually in this magazine. Let's see how we can do that.

The first thing is I want to place my design into this. So I go to Place Embedded and I choose the magazine design that I completed in the previous exercise. I need to size this and distort it to fit this mockup.

So I'm going to size it and rotate it and generally get it into position, although it's not going to be quite perfectly fitting this page. Once we kind of get it to be the general size, we then need to go in to Transform and we need to distort this. So I'm going to choose Distort.

And I'm going to go to each corner and pull each corner individually to match the corner of this photo. This will allow you to move each corner individually and get it to match with the perspective of the photo that you're working on. I like to zoom in and do this carefully to make sure I get everything matched up.

Now it's matching the perspective of what I've got here. But if we look, this paper is not straight. So to get this to match the bend of the paper, we can do a warp.

With warp, I get these little dots that allow me to bend and curve this. Now you want to be careful about pushing and pulling too much. But I'm going to change this to match the paper.

And you can do this on both ends to get it to match the paper. So that way I've got the curve. And I can do the same thing here if necessary.

There's a little bit of a curve here, like so. And that way it's matching the curve. When I hit the checkbox up here to be done, I now have that placed as though it's on that page.

And if you want the most minimal, just quick thing, you could call this done and be finished with this. Keeping in mind that when you double click, this is a smart object with all of your editable stuff. If you want to edit the design, you can do that here.

When you're done, save the changes. And when you close, this will come in and update. In the future, if you ever want to replace this with a different magazine ad,  you could actually just replace this by right-clicking on this and saying,  replace the contents, choose a different Photoshop file,  and it will just swap it out and it will keep all of your distortions that you've done.

So this becomes like a mock-up template for the future, which is great. But we can go a little bit further if we want to make this a bit more believable. One thing that would make this more believable is if this black were not quite this deep, saturated black,  because that's not realistic for printing.

We would normally see some paper texture through this,  and the darks would not be so beautifully rich and black. When we print, things get lighter, they're a little bit more grayish. So putting some paper texture on this could make this more believable.

I'm going to place in some paper texture that I have. And let's go here to this paper texture. And I'm going to scale this down, get it in the general area here.

This I do not need to really distort and make it match the shape. As long as I've got this over it, I can clip this onto this. So I can hold Option or on Windows, ALT, and then click to clip that onto there.

If you don't remember that keyboard shortcut, you can also go up here. I'm going to release this clipping mask that I just made. And I could create the clipping mask if you don't remember that keyboard shortcut.

And so that clips it onto the shape. So the bottom thing determines the shape. And now I need to play with the blending mode here.

I could try some different blending modes. Or maybe I could just simply just make it a bit transparent as well. That might work.

But I can also play with different blending modes if I think that might make this look a little bit more realistic. I could try one of the blending modes that maybe do some different contrast here. So these can play with contrast.

Or one of the lightning blend modes as well. So I can try what I think looks good here. And maybe something like pin light here.

I kind of like that this shows some of that texture there. I think that one looks pretty good. And I just have to go with the opacity that I think is realistic.

Again, I know that the black looks beautiful. But it's just not realistic to print. And we want to kind of match the same kind of lightness that we have over here.

Because that makes it look more realistic as though it were actually printed. The blacks would wash out a bit. So I think that's looking pretty good.

And I think the last part that would make this even more believable is in the crease there would be some shading. Some shadow. So right now we kind of lost that because we placed this over top of it.

So I'm also going to create a layer. A gradient layer that allows me to put that gradient in there. So I'm going to go create a new layer.

That is a gradient layer. And this gradient is going to be a black to transparent color. Now, I didn't choose my black before I came in here.

So let me cancel this. I should choose my foreground being black before I come in here. So that it will do the foreground to transparent.

So then I'm going to go back. Do my gradient layer. And here I have my foreground to transparent.

So it will be the black to transparent. While I have this open, I do want to experiment with the angle here and the position. So I'm going to pull this up a little bit here.

And I need to angle this. And I think I also need to make this smaller. I need a quicker transition here.

I don't want this to be super big. I want a smaller gradient here. And I need to match the angle to that of my magazine here.

So maybe something like this. Now, we can always tone down the opacity of this. Right now I'm focusing on the size, which is the scale.

And the angle. I think I got the angle pretty good. And I think I like that for the scale.

Okay. Once again, I need to clip this on. By either going to here in the layer menu and choosing create clipping mask.

Or I can option click or ALT click on Windows. And that puts that on to there. I can still go back in and double click to make changes.

If I need to then move that again. Maybe make that a smaller scale. So it's a faster transition.

And also keep in mind that this is the darkest shadow. So I can go to my opacity and I can tone this down. I might not need that much of a shadow.

I just need some darkening effect. Maybe I double click and move that shadow just a little bit. Until I get just a little bit of extra shading there.

Doesn't need to be a lot. But I think that just helps to add just a little bit of depth. A little bit of realism.

And then it's like our magazine is placed into this real life situation. And keep in mind the beauty of this is that at any point you can double click. Open up that smart object.

You could put new stuff in here. You could change things. And then when you save and close it will update this.

Or as I said before you can also just right click on this. And say replace contents. Choose a new magazine ad.

And it will just pop right in here. As long as it's an 8.5 × 11. It will replace perfectly.

So you have made your own mock up here. Now let's say you wanted to distribute this to other people. You could make this a generic magazine ad.

You could call these things something nice like shadow. You could call this just paper texture. And then this I would say put your design here.

If you were going to give this to somebody else. And then this could be your own mock up that you use. But you could also distribute it online.

If you want to sell it online. Or you want to distribute it freely. This could be a mock up that you could give to other people.

Of course in this example this is someone else's stock photo. So you would obviously need the license to distribute things. So I'm not saying this particular mock up.

But in general if this were your own photo. And you want to distribute this as your own mock up. That would be something that you could do.

So to try this out go ahead and do exercise 60. Where you can make your own custom mock up.