Product images are very important to successful marketing. A flat 2D design can give the customer some idea about the product but a 3D product photograph can really make an impression and result in the customer clicking that buy button. Making the mockups of your products can be very time consuming but you can save a lot of time by using Photoshop^R actions. Some of these actions are quite expensive but one very nice person is giving his away free to all.

I learned that creating mockups is a big job when I created printable graphics for scrapbooking websites. These graphics were fun to design and could be anything from pencil toppers and paper dolls to cards with matching envelopes. I found the printables that sold the most were the ones that I displayed as 3D products in a group setting.

To create that “product display”, I had to draw each product, such as paper plates, tote bags and mugs, in Photoshop as blank 3D bases and then bend the printables over the base using Photoshop’s transform tools and blend modes. The result was somewhat realistic but not perfect. The most difficult part was reproducing realistic drop shadows. That was several years ago, and although I enjoyed creating the product displays, it took quite a long time to draw each of the 3D bases.

The owner of PSD Covers has taken all the work out of creating 3D product shots for the rest of us. Starting with a photograph of each project, he turned that into a Photoshop action that takes your flat design and maps it into the 3D shot. The result is amazingly realistic, including highlights and shadows that would take quite a long time to draw freehand.

He has many product actions such as Apple^R iPad^R, iPhone^R, MacBookPro^R, iMac^R, business card, clothing, bag, bottle, box, can, carton, compact dick, cup, mug, brochure, flyer, book and magazine. The resulting images vary in size and are quite large at about 17 inches x 21 inches at 300 resolution. The image is also a layered .psd image with a transparent background. So it can be used in print and web marketing.

These Photoshop actions are free to use for personal and commercial use and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Each product photograph action is a separate downloadable and easy to install into Photoshop. Then you just copy/paste your design in to the Layers panel and resize as needed to fit the “template”. The actions work in Photohop CS3 and above.

Here are examples of a book and magazine mockup I have made for my upcoming ebook Book Apps with Kwik.

http://www.psdcovers.com

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