Lessons
Lesson Info
Mock-up with Perspective
- So, this one is super fun. I'm going to grab this artwork and the blank easel. So this is the one thing that I shot again from the craft store. This was from the dollar bin. It's a little easel that was like this big. And I shot it with my cell phone and it turned out pretty good. Not bad for $1.50 and my cell phone. So, we're going to take this artwork and place it there. And it's really simple. I'll just select it again. And actually no, let's wait. Let's do, we're going to do this. That's right with a Smart Object. So, before we put in the artwork, we're going to put in like a placeholder for the artwork. And because we need to transform the artwork to take on the perspective of the easel. That's going, I mean it's not a lot of work, it's really easy. But if we do it to a Smart Object, we only have to do it once. And then any artwork that we want to throw in here, we just throw it in, and it will take on the same transformation as the Smart Object. So, we don't have to re-distort ...
it, does that make sense? So, before we put in the artwork, we're going to put in our placeholder Smart Object. So, I'm going to grab the rectangle shape tool again. And it doesn't matter what the fill is. Usually, when you buy mock-ups from other people, just to make it easy to see, they make the fill colors, like really wild, like neon, something, so you can see it and it's clear that it's not part of the photo. So, we'll follow in suit with that. So I'm going to just click and drag. I'm trying to imagine like if this easel was facing the camera, what size it would be about? And like the shape of it. So, I'm going to do something. We'll just say about that. I'm going to make it a little bigger than I need to. And we'll go like with this. So, there is our placeholder for the artwork. Now, before we distort it, we want to make it a Smart Object. It's a vector object right now. But it's not a Smart Object. Those are different things. So we need to make it a Smart Object by right-clicking or control clicking, and choosing, convert to Smart Object. Now we see this little icon that now it's a Smart Object. Now, we can distort this. So I'll press Command or Control + T to bring up free transform. And if I just drag from the corners, I'm going to scale it or change the shape, but I'm not going to distort it. So once I'm in free transform, I need to enter what's called distort. So I'll right-click inside the space and now I'll choose Distort. And actually, I should have reduced the opacity, so I could see what I was doing. So now I can grab the corners independently and I'm just going to move them and I'm going to go slightly beyond the bounds of the box, in case that we ever, like in the example, I used a black background. So in case we ever want to do something like that. I want this to stretch slightly beyond the boundaries of the actual canvas. Just a little bit. And we'll wrap it to the canvas in a minute. So something like this. And actually, what I should have done, is temporarily reduce the opacity here, so I can see what I was doing. Because once you're in transform mode, you can't change the opacity. And that's going to be fine, I think. So, we'll keep that back to 100%. Now, to put our artwork in here, we do it a little bit differently. Because this is now the Smart Object. So I'm going to rename this layer. And if we were going to give this mock-up to someone else, they need to know how to use it. So I would say like, your artwork here. So this is the layer where they would put their artwork. So, we'll go copy this artwork. So CMD or CTRL + A, copy, and we can close it. And then I'll double-click this Smart Object, and watch what happens. I get a whole new document. So that Smart Object is now its own document and it's a temporary file, so the file extension is not PSD, it's PSB. That's one indication that we know that this is our temporary Smart Object file. So now I'm going to hide this orange layer. Because I don't want that as my artwork and I'm going to paste this design right here. And scale this a little bit, so that it fits nicely. Now all I have to do, to put this on to the easel at the correct perspective, is save it. So, I'm not going to give it a name, because it's a temporary file. I need to resave it, just like it is. So, i'll just hit CMD or CTRL + S, and then I'll close it. CMD or CTRL + W, and now it's on my easel. And it's distorted. And also I should change the blend mode to multiply. And now all of the artwork will just be in multiply mode. The change that it creates is subtle. Here, let me see if you can see. But like when it's in normal, it's just pink paint, and orange paint, and all of that, but when I say multiply it's going to interact a little more with the texture of the canvas underneath it. So, that is how simple it is to do perspective. And if I wanted to change this out and put something else in here, like let's just open recent our... This little guy. So, maybe we're just going to put him on there. So I'm going to copy this. And I would just double-click this, paste him in. Oh my gosh, it's the same gold color, look at that. That was a happy little accident. Oh goodness, he's really big. Let's just do that. There we go. Maybe, we just want to put him for some reason, then I could just save it and close it and now he's there. Now, we see, because I added this color background. Instead of just the white, now we see that it's going beyond the canvas, right? So what we would need to do is select the canvas and then clip it. And I think I already have a selection made just to save us time. Nope, I don't. So we'll do it. So I'll grab the polygonal lasso tool and I'm just going to come in here and click ever so easily around this edge of the actual, let's split this part in half. And I already made it less perfect, less than perfect. So, to clean up the selection, I'm probably just going to add to it. So I'm going to come back here. I sort of missed the edge. So I'm going to click the add modifier. And just go around a little bit more I should have zoomed in. Now I'll just pop over here. That side looks good. So that's our canvas area. So what we want is for this to wrap into this. So now I'll just mask it with this selection active. I'll just click the mask button. And now it sticks just to the canvas. So now I can put any artwork in here, even if it has a color background and it'll just stick to the canvas. It'll be already distorted and I don't have to redo any of it. Isn't that awesome? If I wanted to put a background color in here, I think the file that's in everyone's bonus goodies has the selection saved. So I'm sparing you from having to make these selections even. I'm pretty sure the files... if you go to Select, Load Selection yeah, you'll have it. I don't have it in this file. But if we wanted to, let's say, add a color background to this, well then we need to select the background. And it's pretty simple. I'm just going to do a quick and dirty selection. Actually, let's select the easel and then we'll inverse it. So I'm going to use the quick selection brush to just do a really quick and dirty selection here. Oh, come on buddy. With the magic wand maybe. We'll do this and then we'll add to it. So I'll do the polygonal lasso and then I'll grab my quick selection tool, and I'll add to the selection to get the easel. This is why I thought I saved it with the file, so I could spare the time on camera. But now you can watch how you make selections. So that's a little bonus for you. So that's not perfect, but in the interest of time, we will pretend that it is. It's not terrible. So I'll inverse the selection. Because I selected the easel but what I actually want is everything except the easel. So I'll invert it by going to Select, Inverse. And then I'm going to add a blank layer and then let's fill it with something, I don't know, like that purple. Why am I, I'm not usually a purple kind of person, but apparently, I am today. So once we get that in there, we change the blend mode to multiply. And then we clean up our horrible selection. And we would be set. I should have done this with a layer mask. Let's do that. We'll add a solid color and then we'll put a layer mask on it. So now to clean up this really bad selection that I made, we would just come in and paint it with the layer mask. And then we would have an editable piece, which is pretty awesome. So this is included with a nice clean selection that's like, really well done. So that's perspective. - Do you need to make the layer that contains our work in the placeholder a Smart Object too? - Oh, no. - Does that help or is that an advantage? - It might be. Yeah, I would say it would. Because, for example, let's say then that I decide, "Oh, I want the monkey bigger in the frame." Then to edit that, I would double-click the Smart Object. And if I wanted to scale him, then I should have made him a Smart Object too. Otherwise, I'd have to go get him and replace him. So yeah, in real life, I probably would have done this. But sometimes I do it because I know that I want the flexibility, and sometimes I'm just lazy, and then I kick myself later. So when in doubt, always make it a Smart Object, I guess. But that could come in handy. - Okay. And then does this work, like how much of this that you're doing is just the CC version, the most recent version, how much of this stuff will work? - I think it's all pretty. - It's pretty basic tools, right? - Yeah, I mean I think these tool have been around forever, and the Smart Objects have been around for a long time. So I don't think that any of it's super specific to the version.
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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! 👍