Lessons
Lesson Info
Mock-up from a Simple Image
Okay, so we're going to open two files, this artwork here, and the mockup file. So, in the last example, we created something from nothing. And in this example, we're going to just take something and basically plop it in. So, it's like really straightforward, really super simple. This is a scene that I photographed with my cell phone. So, nothing fancy. It's not like I busted out my studio lights and did a big complicated thing, super just simple. And, again, I shot this at the public library, too. I was out on location working, and then I had this idea, and I literally ran to the craft store, and I bought scrapbook paper, that's what the background is, just like a 12 by 12 sheet of scrapbook paper. I bought a little pack of greeting cards for like a $1.50, and I borrowed a pencil from the desk at the library. And then those little clothes pins, I also picked up in like the dollar bin at the crafts store. So, the craft store is a great source for mockup material stuff, if you really ge...
t into this. And then I just set up a little like shooting area and I used a piece of posterboard that I had bought as a bounce board for fill light, and I shot this in like the lobby of the library and they all thought I was nuts. But it's great, it makes a great mockup. So, it's really simple. I tell you that to show that you don't have to have fancy stuff. Okay, so what we're going to do, is take this artwork that I have here, and we're just going to place it onto the card. So, I'm going to CMD or CTRL + A to select it and copy it, close it. I'll come back over here and just paste it in. Now, it's too big, obviously. That's a good thing. Again, better to have it big than too small. If it's too small, you probably just can't use it. So, I'm going to right-click and make this a smart object, and CMD or CTRL + T, and scroll, or, excuse me, scale this down. So, I'm holding Shift while I drag from a corner, so that nothing gets warped all funny or distorted, and now I'm going to rotate it to match the angle. This is still flat, so we're not dealing with perspective, because it's shot from straight above, right? So, this is like the Instagram stuff of everybody's doing flat lays. So, this is what we would call a flat lay. So, photograph from up above and everything's just laying flat, and it's parallel to the camera. So, no perspective issues. But I'm going to scale this down just a smidge, and maybe I'm going to put it towards the top of the card, so we'll have some nice white space at the bottom. That'll be good, and I'll hit Commit to get that in. Now, of course, this looks like I Photoshopped it, because it's on top of the envelope, and it's on top of the pencil, and we need to fix that. Before we do that, I'm going to change the blend mode to Multiply, and it's not really going to do much that we can see here, but it can come in handy in other instances. A lot of times, whenever you're overlaying something onto something else in a mockup, and you want it to look like it's really there, the Multiply blend mode will facilitate that. In this case, we don't see a huge difference, because it's so black, but you'll see later how that's quite useful. Okay, now we're going to mask this. So, if you've never used a layer mask before, it produces the effect that looks like we're erasing the document from here, but we're not going to erase it, because if we erase, it's gone. What we want to do is mask it, so we can get it back later if we need to. So, at the bottom of the layers panel, I'll click the layer mask, and I'm going to grab the Brush tool. So, I've got my Brush tool, I'm going to make sure I have like a normal brush and not something weird from earlier, and I want my brush to have a hard edge. So, you can come up here and change the hardness, like this, or what I do is I use my keyboard. So, the left and right bracket keys will make the brush bigger or smaller, and Shift-Left Bracket Key makes it softer, and Shift-Right Bracket Key makes it harder. So, I want a hard, round brush and I want black paint, and then all I have to do is basically paint with black paint and it's going to behave like an eraser. So, I just want to be careful. If I go too far, like, "Oh, whoops," "Now I've made a mess here." Obviously, you can press Cmd or CTRL + Z to undo that, but maybe you don't notice that until later. So, to fix it, I'm going to press X, which is going to flip-flop my colors down here in my toolbar. If I press X, I get white paint on top and then I can just paint back. And in the layers panel, we see what the mask is looking like. Oops. It's like this. We're basically just painting black or white on our image, but it's affecting the mask. And just like when Zorro wears a mask, and the black mask hides his face, any place on this mask that we paint with black, is going to hide whatever is on that layer. So, all right. So, now we need to come over and mask the pencil with black paint, so I'll just paint that. Oops, and I went too far, so I'll press X to switch to white paint and paint it back, and that would be done and ready to go. If we wanted to change the color of the envelope or anything like that, we can just select it and change it, but I'm going to show you that in some other examples, so we'll save that, but you could do it here. And this would be ready to go.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
This was a great class for beginners or current designers who want to expand their current skill set. Khara has a great way of breaking things down and is inspiring to watch! Highly recommend!
Hannah Pearce
Great little course for beginners and designers, like myself, who are fairly new to mocking-up designs in situ. Khara explained things clearly and concisely. Enjoyed this course very much - Thank you!
Hayden Brooker
This is my fifth course on Creative Live and I think Khara may be my favorite instructor so far! Very easy to listen to and charismatic. Made an idea I have found daunting and endlessly failed at seem easy and exciting! Cannot wait now to have a project to mockup when before I was so stuck on the process I dreaded it. Great Course! 👍