Create High-End Brand Mockups Using Free Images in Adobe Photoshop

1. Introduction: Tired of using the same free mockups that everyone else is using, let's change that. I'll show you how to create your own custom mockups using free images and Adobe Photoshop. Hi, I'm Khadija, but you can call me Dija. I'm a brand designer, an art-directed and a top teacher here on Skillshare, specializing in branding and packaging design. In this class, we're creating high end lifestyle custom mockups using free images in Adobe Photoshop. But more importantly, you learn how to think like an art director. These mockups are designed to tell a story to show how the brand looks and lives in real life. So think of it as a day in the life of your brand in your design presentations. And remember, using free mockup templates is great, too, and I still use them often. But for moments where you want your presentation to look and feel unique and intentional, these custom mockups can make a huge difference. The best presentations use both. I'll walk you through my favorite image sources, my system of how to filter and pick the right images, and then we'll dive into Photoshop, where I'll show you step by step how to blend, retouch, and polish your mockups. If you're a designer who's looking to elevate their brand presentations but can't always buy mockup templates or just want more custom look, then this class is for you. If you previously took my branding essentials presentations class, then this is the perfect next step. We'll elevate those presentations with high end mockups. What's even better is that this process is scalable and reusable. Once you build a few mockups, you'll create a custom library of custom Photoshop mockup files that you can tweak and adapt for future projects. It's a skill that grows with you. Ready to create mockups that tell a story? Let's jump into it. 2. Meet Rawteen: Meat Rawteen. To walk you through this class, I'll be using a real lien project called Rawteen a protein bar brand designed for Gen-Z demographic. The vibe is bold, loud, and slightly rebellious, and that meant that mockups had to match that energy. I'll be recreating and expanding on some of the mockups I designed for this project and walk you through the exact Photoshop process I use. Mockups aren't just decoration. They're how your brand lives in the real world. They help your client visualize their product and context. It's also where a lot of WOW factor comes in during presentations. They're intentionally style to feel editorial, not templated. Now, something important before we dive in. In my brand presentations, I typically use a mix of bespoke lifestyle mockups and high quality free mockups templates that I find online. For example, if a client asks me to include business cards in the presentation, I'm not going to hunt down the perfect or directed photo of a business card. In that case, a well made mockup template does the job beautifully. But when I want to show off how the brand lives, its vibe, its quirks, the world it belongs in, I build custom mockups using lifestyle imagery. Both approaches are valid. In fact, I think mixing those two approaches together creates the most layered and richest brown presentations. This class is all about the custom side. So let's start hunting for the right images and I'll walk you through my process. 3. Finding the Right Images: Now, let's talk about finding the right images for your mockups. This is where we're training your creative eye. You're not just searching for any random photo, but you're searching for the right image that will serve your brand for the project you're working on. There are tons of free image sources online, but for the sake of this class, I'm going to stick to my favorite and my go to website for free image sources, which is Unsplash. I always find the best editorial and lifestyle images on here. Unsplash has a mix of free images and paid images with Unsplash plus. You'll find a watermark on each image indicating that is under their paid subscription. So let's say, for example, I type mockup. You can actually filter from here the top the type of license for the image search. So I'm going to pick free. And you can also pick the orientation if you only wanted landscape, portrait or square, but I'm going to leave it at all, so it expands our image hunt as much as possible. And you can also have categories here at the top if you're not sure what to type or if you're needing a little inspiration. I always find that street photography and three D renders have a really great collection that can open up ideas when don't know exactly where to write. And that sometimes happens with me. So I just go through those categories for inspiration. Before we start searching, I want to give you a quick checklist of what makes a good image for a custom mockup. These are always things I look for, and they save me hours of editing later. Number one, is the lighting good? Natural lighting works best. Nothing too shadowy or blown out. Clean lighting, soft shadows, no crazy reflections. Number two, is the surface clean and clear? I avoid patterns, heavy textures, or overly complex creases. Look for minimal creases or folds, especially for fabric like t shirts or hoodies. Number three, is the perspective workable? Can I realistically place a design on this object without it feeling off? There are some minimal edits you can do to fit the perspective, but you don't want to work with a really difficult angle that would just look flat out photoshopped. Number four, is the background clean or brand appropriate? Ideally, something minimal or fitting to the brand personality. Neutral backgrounds are ideal or backgrounds that fit your brand's vibe, and then you can easily swap for another color. Number five, is there space to place my design? Look for breathing room and natural areas or spaces where you can place a logo or maybe a brand pattern. Beyond the technicals, I want you to think like an art-directed. Instead of just asking, can I place the logo here, ask, would this image tell the right story for the brand? Does this feel like something you'd actually seen a launch or campaign? Does it elevate or dilute the brand message? Does this person in the image reflect the brand's type of consumer? These are all questions that level you up as a designer because you're not just editing photos on Photoshop, but you're putting yourself in your client's shoes and visualizing what the brand could potentially look like for them in a way that makes sense to them with relevance and in context. Now here's the mindset shift. I always look for images that require the least amount of manipulation on Photoshop. Now, I know that sounds counterintuitive for Photoshop class, but trust me, the less you have to warp and fix and skew and edit, the more believable and realistic the mockup will be. That doesn't mean we're skipping Photoshop. We're still going to edit, polish, and clean up our images, add some colors, place our logo, but it means that we're not forcing a logo onto a crumpled T shirt or adding shadows that don't exist. This method is meant to be fast, repeatable and scalable for every brand presentation that you do. Now that we know where to look and how to spot a good image, I've divided our image search into five categories. You can use the same categories I use here in this exercise, but this process is meant to show you that you can apply this method to any image or category of your own choice. So let's go through them one by one. So my first category is a CAP. This type of mockup is very much on brand, and it resonates with many brands, especially if they're tailored to a young demographic. Let's say I will type CAP in my surge bar, and let's say I want it to be gender specific because the brand's main consumers are women. Okay. And then let's take those two images, for example, that are made by the same photographer. What I like about these is how it fits with the brand setting. The type of pose with the cap is relevant to the brand, and it could be an interesting way in how the brand expands its campaigns to younger people by making custom merch and caps. This is much more exciting than just a plain cap mockup on an empty background, and it feels like it could be a part of a brand photo shoot. From a technical standpoint, the cap is pretty plain. I can just easily remove this logo on Photoshop, and all that's left to do is change the color of the cap, maybe put some color in her nails, place the logo or a cool brand message, and play around with cropping the image so there aren't any distractions in the background or around the cap. Another popular mockup choice. It's a great way to showcase how the brand can expand its activation efforts, and a toe bag is very much on brand with a younger consumer. So this image caught my eye for several reasons. It hits all the checklist boxes of being clean. The background is neutral, so I can easily add color to it. The pose and the type of model in the image fits with the brand's consumer type. And the toad bag is completely plain with a very minor crease that we can totally edit on Photoshop and make it look natural. And Btus points for also being able to color her pants and t shirt to match the overall color palette of the brand. Now, more often than not, if a client asks specifically for a mockup of a store front, you won't have the budget to create a high quality three to render for that. And though there are a lot of free and ready made templates that you can use, I sometimes like to hunt for a more bespoke store front feel. It's important to pick an image though that you can easily edit because you don't want to overly edit it where it looks borderline tacky. So take this image, for example, There's a clear space where I can place my brand's logo and mimic the same shadow angle. It's also easy to recolor the storefront color. And for the window, I can also cover it up placing a poster that says opening soon or something. And then I can resize or crop the image and remove the person in the background to make it look more intact. Next up is human versus product. So part of the presentation mockups, I like to include images of people who look like consumers interacting with the product. This one takes a bit of time to find as there aren't any specific keywords that just hit the spot. But in this case, I type something like Gen-Z if I'm looking for a specific persona, and it would also be ideal in the pose itself if they look like they're holding something, so I can place the product on there. So in my case, for my protein bar brand, these two images work because they both look like the brand's consumer, and they look like they're holding something. I can then recolor the clothing and the background to match the brand's color palette, and it will look like a cool campaign or photo shoot for the brand, where the client can see their product in action. And last but not least is your wildcard option. Now, this category will differ from each brand you're working on. This is where you can do something unique and different. Maybe you can browse in the three D render section or type abstract props where you can place the product onto a cool setup and make it look like an art-directed photoshoot, or it can be any other type of mockup that you feel fits your brand. Maybe if it's a restaurant, then it can be a cool image of a coaster on a table or something like that. In my case, I found this image of three D rendered shapes of cylinders and balls and squares. It looked very playful and bold and interesting, and I thought I could place one of the protein bars tilted with an ankle onto one of these shapes, and I can then easily recolor the background and the shapes to match the bar. This is just a cool way to showcase the product in a different light instead of what you can typically see. Alright, now that we have our image lineup pretty, let's head into Photoshop and start bringing these mockups to life. 4. Mockup I: Cap: All right, so this is the first category of our image references, the cap. And first thing that I'm going to do is that I'm just going to double click on the background, and I want to remove this logo here. I'm going to go to my Rectangle Marquee tool, select that logo. Edit, fill content aware. And that's gone, looks nice and clean. Then next, I want to remove this background over here because it's a little bit too distracting and I think a solid color would work best. So to do that, we're going to go up to select subject. And that's just going to select the main subject in the photo if it's clear enough, which in my case, is the model. And what I want to do next is I'm just going to invert that selection, Command I, and delete it. And then we're going to add a solid color from our fill and adjustment pop down menu here. Go to solid color, so that's interchangeable. And I'm just going to select any color for now. I'm going to change it later. Let's go with orange. Great. And then, as you can see, when I selected the subject tool, it doesn't really cut everything so perfectly, and that's okay. It just removed 95% of the hard work for you. So in order for it to look a little bit clean, I'm going to have to go in with my pen tool and just manually clean up these areas so that it's nice and smooth and everything is clean cut. All right, great. Now that's all cut and smooth, I'm just going to convert my main layer here into a smart object because I want to add some levels and lighting to it just to brighten up a little bit. We're going to turn this into a smart object so we don't make any unredeemable damages to our image. Again, in my adjustment layer, I'm just going to go to levels or you can click Command L, and I'm just going to play around here with the levels a little bit just to brighten the shadows and highlights a little bit because it's a little bit dark for my liking. And I'm also gonna add a tiny little bit of curves. And just add a clipping mask to that image. Okay, great. Now instead of adding a logo to the cap, I think I'm going to add a cool phrase from the brand messages that I made for this brand because I think that no one is going to buy a cap with a logo on it. Instead, I just want to put a cool message from the brand phrases that we have here. These all reflect the brand's tone and voice and witty character, and I think that's just going to suit something like a cap so much more. So let's say I take one of these phrases and I just type in certified snacker. I think that's just something a lot of people are going to relate to. It's going to be a cool thing to put on a cap. As for the cap color itself, I think I'm just going to go with purple, copy the hex code, and then jump back into Photoshop. So in order to add the color onto the cap, I can either draw manually around the cap with my pen tool, or I can just go up ahead onto select focus area. Give it a minute, and it's going to detect the sharpest part of the image. Now, you can play around here with a slider until you're satisfied with the selection that it made. I will have to eventually go back in with my pen tool when I'm editing the mask, but this just streamlines the process, as you can see. When you're happy with it, click Okay. And while the selection is still active, we're going to add a solid color from our fill layer again and paste the hex code that we copied from Illustrator. And then I'm just going to select a blending mode that matches my image. Whatever looks the most natural and just what makes sense, you can play around with this. Okay, and then make sure to select the mask window of your layer here with my pen tool, I'm just going to draw around everything that's basically not the cap that has the purple color on it in order to delete it from the mask. Once you have your selection, just click Delete. And on the opposite hand of that, I want to add color to the strap. I'm just going to draw around it with my pen tool. And then hit X on your keyboard to invert that selection, and that's just going to add color to the strap. So I'm going to repeat that for the remaining straps on the left and behind her hand up top. I'm going to go back to my Illustrator file because I want to change the background color to one of our brand colors since orange isn't really a part of it. I think I'm going to go with the bubblegum pink as I feel like it might be complimentary to the purple cap. Copy the hex code, go back to the file, and just double click on the orange layer. It's that easy and paste the code. Okay, great. Now that that's done, I want to go ahead and move on and start putting our phrase on the cap, which I typed earlier certified snacker. Now I have pre downloaded this mockup from Graphic Burger. It's also free. I just wanted it to have this embroidered effect. It looks a little bit more natural on a cap rather than just paste the flat typography on the cap straight ahead. It's just going to look like it makes more sense when it's embroidered, and it's a free mockup that's readily available. I should just plug in my phrase and copy it back onto my mockup. Now, as you can see, the mockup already comes with a skewed angle that doesn't suit the angle of our cap, we're just going to have to do minor adjustments using this que and warp tool just to make sure that it suits the angle of the cap that's skewed a little to the right. I'm just going to go ahead up to edit, transform and skew. I'm just going to play around here with the angle until it makes sense with the placement of the cap. Then I want to use the warp tool here to create these irregular waves and creases onto my phrase because the cap naturally has these creases when it's worn because nothing is ever naturally super straight. If you're ever unsure of the angle or if you feel stuck, you can always put back the original image on top of your mockup and see exactly where the original logo was placed and you can mimic this exact same angle. For example, if I were to lower the opacity of the image, I would see exactly where the Jack Mus logo was placed and I would go off of that as a reference. And if you notice the cap is sort of darker on the left side, there's sort of a shadow hitting it from the left. So I want to mimic that same shadow onto my phrase, so it looks like it's blending in with the cap better. So I'm just going to create a new layer and select my certified snacker layer below. Then with my brush tool, I'm just going to select a darker color of that lime yellow. And ever so slightly just brush over it, lower the opacity, and add a multiply blending mode. Then likewise, I'm going to add some highlights on the right side where the light hits it. Pick a lighter lime yellow shade and brush over it. And select an appropriate blending mode for that as well. As an extra tiny little step, I want to add an extra shadow on top of the phrase. I'm just going to add a new layer. Again, with my brush tool, I'm going to select just a darker shade of the purple. So the shadow actually goes over the phrase itself and not just within the word, if that makes sense. I'm just doing this very lightly. I don't want it to be too overpowering and I have a light opacity. And with the same line of thought, I want to add a highlight on top of the word itself. So I'm just going to pick a very light purple shade and with my brush tool, also apply that on the right side where the light hits. Okay, and then I want to add just a little bit more dimension to the word itself. So I'm going to go to FX down below and create a drop shadow. You have to be very careful with this, so it doesn't look too tacky, so I'm just going to do this very, very light handedly as well. Click multiply, adjust the distance. So it just shows that it's slightly protruding off the cap because when it's embroidered, it's going to seem slightly lifted. So there's naturally going to be a little bit of a shadow, but nothing too much. Okay, great. Now that looks good to me. Next step is that we want to recolor her t shirt, her nails, and start matching the aesthetic of the overall mockup. So what I'm going to do is I'm gonna pick colors from my Illustrator palette and add them as solid colors and then start editing their masks. Okay, so after I added the blue, I realized it's way too many colors in the mockup. I just prefer to be more monochromatic. I'm just going to copy the purple color and change the blue to purple. Super easy to change your mind and increase the opacity a little bit. Okay. And then we can tackle the color of her nails. I think I want them to be this lime yellow color just to add a little bit of symmetry here and there, and I think that it's going to make it so I'm just going to go over to Illustrator and copy the hex code of that shade, create a solid color layer, invert the mask. Then with my pen tool, I'm just going to draw over each individual nail. Now that the nail colors are masked on, I'm just going to go ahead again in the blending mode and select the one that fits the most Oh. You can always add another blending mode on top of the one you have just to make that seem even more realistic. Now, this is me being nitty gritty, but the color of her lips is actually one of the primary brand colors in Rawteen, which is that fiery red. But I want to make it pop a little bit more. It seems a little bit faded. I'm going to go back to my Illustrator and copy the color code of our primary brand color, head back into Photoshop, create a solid color layer, paste the code, And then with my pen tool, I'm just going to draw over the natural shape of her lips, fill in that color and go in and correct it if I need to with a brush, just so it looks a little bit more natural. And then as a last step, we want to create a new layer and select that color layer where we can add a shadow to the inner corner of her mouth on the left because that's where the shadow naturally hits her face beneath the cap. Set the blending mode to multiply and adjust the opacity. Okay, great. As a very final step, I just want to add some dimension to the image by adding a very slight gradient behind the model. So I'm going to go to my gradient tool here and select a slightly darker pink shade than the background. And at the endpoint, I'm just going to select the background color. I'm going to draw the gradient from the bottom left to the top right. And go to my blending mode and select multiply and adjust the opacity accordingly. That's just going to give it a nice little dimension instead of a solid background. And then, likewise, I want to add a little bit of highlight at the top right corner. So with my big brush, I'm just going to do that and adjust the opacity, soft light and really lower that opacity down, so it's very subtle. And there you have it. This is the final outcome. The great thing about this exercise is that you now have a customized mockup in your library. So in your future projects, you can just go in, plug in the new colors, replace the logo. I'll take 5 minutes and you'll have a really nice unique mockup for any project that you create afterwards. 5. Mockup II: Tote Bag: All right, so next up is our toad bag. We're going to go about it the same method as the cap. First thing that we want to do is go up to select subject, and then we're going to hit Command Shift I to select that background layer so we can isolate a color for it. And while the selection is still active, we're going to go to our fill layer here and click solid color. And then change the blending mode to multiply so that it preserves the natural shadows that are already there. Then we can go to our Trustee file over here and select a color from our brown palette. Maybe the purple again, for the background this time. I just paste the hex code. Alright, cool. Now, like the previous mockup, the subject tool doesn't really cleanly delete the subject that you want. So I'm just going to go ahead and clean up these lines with my pen tool so that it's not so squiggly and sloppy here. I just wanted to look a little bit more clean. So this is where you can manually go in with your pen tool and start deleting these wide areas. All right. Now that that's nice and clean and crisp, we want to now start adding some color onto our toad bag. I'm going to go back to my Trustee Illustrator file, and I think I'm going to go with this turquoise color as it's a nice contrast with the purple. G to copy that hex code, go back to Photoshop, add a solid color layer, paste that code, go to my mask, invert it, Command I, and now we can zoom in and start coloring that color code with our pen tool onto the mask. All right. Now that the whole tote bag is selected and inverted with a mask, you can go ahead and pick the blending mode that makes the most sense. But because the tot bag was already white, this is just going to make things so much more easier. So I'm just going to select linear burn, which is the most suitable option as it preserves all the shadows over here. Now I just want to adjust some of the levels and the brightness of the toad bag from here. I'm just going to select my original image and then select the toad bag part of it from the mask. I'm going to add a levels layer, clip mask it, and then adjust some of the layers just so it's a little bit sharp. Alright, super. I'm happy with that. Now, the color of her pants are already the slime, yellow green that we have from our brand palette here, which is this one. So I could leave it as is, but I just wanted to be a little bit punchier because this brand is already super loud, super bold, super saturated. So I think all the elements in the mockup need to have that same flavor and character. So I'm just going to copy the hex code, and I'm not going to make it as bright as this yellow here because I think that's a little bit too much, but I do want it to just have a little bit more of a punch. So I'm going to add a new solid layer, paste the code, invert, and then I'm just going to select my pants over here. Okay, now that I have my color selected, obviously, this looks crazy right now. I'm just going to go to my blending mode. And I want to select something that's very, very, very subtle. So I might do something like color and then duplicate that and go over to soft light. And then I'm going to lower that opacity down. So if we just hide these two layers here, you'd see the difference. You see how that just gave it a slight punch. This looks a little bit faded out, whereas this looks much more in line with the brand. Alright, cool. So next up, I want to add what's going to be written here on the toad bag. So kind of the same thinking like the cap, no young person wants to carry a toad bag that has just a brand logo on it. People want to carry cool toad bags. So that's the kind of direction thinking you should be thinking about your brand when you're creating these mockups of how you can push the brand further forward. So I'm going to go to my Illustrator file here of cool brand phrases that I've already created. And the one I like the most for this toad bag is serving energy always because it sort of has a double meaning on the protein bars actually serving energy literally. And it also has a figurative meaning where Gen-Z Z audiences use this phrase serving as part of their culture. So that blends that tangent point perfectly. So I think I'm just going to copy this whole phrase on its own. I do want to make always the same font as serving energy, just to keep it nice and uniform. And I think instead of this warm yellow, I'm going to make it that lime yellow green. So it sort of has asymmetry with the color of the pants. Again, I don't like too many colors in the mockup, so it's not super distracting. And same exercise as the cap. We want to twist and lay that phrase in accordance to the angle of the toad back and pay attention how the toad back dips here in the middle where there's a slight wave. This is where we're going to use the warp tool to create that wave in our phrase. So you just want to keep zooming in and out of it and adjusting as necessary, but I think that wave is good enough for now. And next thing I want to do is I just want to add a slight shadow that just cuts through the phrase over here just like it does on the toad bag. Okay. Always zoom out and adjust, but as you can see, that shadow already made it look a little bit more realistic. Okay, and the very last thing is that I just want to add the logo here at the bottom, just so there's a little bit of a brand presence. And there we go. That is the final outcome. I'm going to leave her T shirt as is. I think the white is a nice break between all the colors. If I add another color, it's just going to be way too much, and I want the focus to be on the bag. That's the hero. And I just wanted to show you how easy and simple some mockups can be. Don't have to spend tons of hours on it. This is just to the point. But everything about the composition and the choice of the image initially is what made it this successful. So that's it. This mockup in a brand presentation would elevate the brand so much further and create a much more complex and richer vision for the client. 6. Mockup III: Storefront: Alright, welcome to the storefront mockup section. I'm really excited to show you how we're going to transform this image, as it's not very typical for a mockup, but it's a great way to help a client envision what their store would look like without actually having to render or outsource a three D designer to do that. So first things first, I'm just going to double click on my image. And I want this image to be the size of my presentation slides, since it's landscape, so I'm just going to go here to canvasize and I'm going to scale this to a 1920 by 1080 pixel presentation slide, but while still preserving the image pixel, so we don't downgrade it. Okay, great. And then we want to start removing some of the things from the image using generative fill. So again, the visual hero of the mockup would be the storefront. We don't want any more distractions than that. You're going to go to your rectangle Marquee tool here, and the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to remove this person in the background. So just select that person. Go to Edit, generate a fill, and leave the prompt empty. Then click Generate. And I'm going to do the same thing for the bench over here. And then I'm going to just click on my original layer here, and I just want to fix this sidewalk. So I'm just going to go to my selection tool again and select this part of the pavement. I'm going to copy it and then Shift Command V copy in place. I'm going to move the sidewalk. To the left, and I'm just going to take my brush and just very lightly delete over the parts until it kind of smoothly matches the rest of the image. It doesn't have to be perfect. This is just for realization purposes. But it does need to look somewhat neat. And there we go. We just have a nice clean sidewalk for our storefront. Okay, great. Then I think what I want to do is I want to complete this brick wall all the way over to the right so we don't have this massive brick pillar here obstructing the view of the store. I think I'm also going to cover the sign over here. Again, with my layer selected, I'm just going to select this part of the brick wall. It's sort of like clone stamping, but this is sometimes just easier. I'm just going to select this part of my brick wall, copy, paste in place. Take the layer on the top, and you just want to move the layer. And we can also do the same thing on the right side. And then we can do the same thing over here on the right, so the entire image just extends to the right. Copy brick part of the image, paste in place, take it to the top and move it. Okay, so that's just setting up our image and just deleting any extra obstructing things in the background. So all I did was just take the brick pattern over on the top and some on the right, and I just kept duplicating the brick patterns till I covered the entire wall. And I also did the same thing with the trim of the wall and just adding extra pavement just so we can have a nice clean view of the storefront without any obstructing elements. Alright, I just flattened out my image here just to clean things up a little bit in the sidebar. I'm going to go ahead now and select the logo on the shop. With my rectangle Marque tool. I'm going to go to edit and generate a fill again. And that's going to be nice and clean. And you're going to want to do the same thing for the rest of the things on the store. So these two icons here and this little button here on the store front, leave the window as is for now. Okay, great. And now we want to start adding color to this front of the store. So same process as before. I'm going to go to my Illustrator file. And because the primary colors for Rawteen are these pale pink and fiery red colors, I think those should be the primary brand colors on a store front as it represents a brand. So I think I'm going to go for this light pink color as the main store color, and then we can have the logo and the coming soon poster in red, so it's a little bit more catchy. So I'm going to do a solid color layer. And invert the mask just so we have the color on. And then to select the store, I'm going to go to my original image here and I'm going to go to Select and subject. And it's going to somewhat select the store for me. We're going to clean up those areas manually later. So with that selection here, I'm just going to go to my color mask and delete it so it applies the color on it. I'm gonna go to my blending mode and select the blending mode that makes the most sense. I think, in this case, it would we color. Okay, perfect. And then still selecting the mask, you're gonna delete everything that you don't want to be pink. Okay. Okay, next up, we want to start adding the logo as like a metal sign here and again on the left. So I already pre downloaded this free mockup signage that I'll use just to plug in my Rawteen logo. Again, this is just to streamline your process. It's for free. It's available. So I'm just going to plug in my Rawteen logo here and then take it back to my store front mockup. M Okay, great. And then we can open up the effects that have already been pre made in the logo effect. Okay, so I think the shadows are a little bit too blurry and harsh for what the picture was originally. So we can go into the shadow folder here, go into effects, and they have multiple drop shadows already placed. So we can play around with the effects and the settings of the drop shadows until we kind of reach the outcome or the look that we're looking for. Same tip like before, if you ever feel lost or you don't know exactly which direction the shadow should be, you can always refer back to the original image and try to complete it as best as you can. Okay, great. Then what I want to do next is I want to go to my logo here. And onto gradient overlay, this is where they laid over the gray silvery effect. But I'm not going to make it metal. I want it to be the red color of the brand color palette. Okay, cool. So that's basically the gist of the exercise. You're just using the same settings that were available in the logo mockup here and you're adjusting them to your image. I'm probably going to go back and spend more time crafting and polishing and making sure I'm comfortable with how the signage looks, but this is for now a good place to be. I also want to add my secondary logo here at the front. So if your logo has an icon, this would be perfect to place here. But in my case, the logo is just a vertical stack of the logo. So I think I'm going to copy that onto the front side of the store. Now, the next thing I want to do is instead of having an empty window here, we can actually put, like, a coming soon poster. So I already prepared in advance a poster that I want to put on the window. So this is actually one of the product shots that I created for one of the chocolate almond bars. So I'm going to copy this poster onto my mockup. No. Okay. We can lower the levels a little bit. And then we can also add an inner shadow because there's already a shadow inside the window, so that would be a natural shadow that covers poster. Let's go to my settings here. And then we can also add a poster effect onto the poster very slightly. I don't want it to be too much. I got this from Unsplash. It's for free. Okay, cool. And then as for this frame around the poster, I think it looks a little bit shabby. So I went ahead onto Unsplash and I grabbed another window frame that I will use for the mockup. These are very, very small details, but when they're put together, they really do make a difference. So I just want to copy the frame, not the window, not anything else. And then go back to my mockup. Okay. And then we can just recolor the frame, and let's just throw on the same shadow that's existing here on the frame so it matches the lighting. Okay, I'm just playing around here with the frame colors, and I added an extra white, lowpase layer over the poster just to give a glass effect. And I'm just going to keep exploring the different frame options until I'm happy with how the store looks. So you're basically acting like the designer of the store front. You're just going to see which colors work best. Maybe you can change the poster. Maybe you can add different things until you're happy with how it looks. You're essentially just showing the client what will make people stop and enter the store. So I'm just going to keep playing around with the colors. Until I reach something that I like. But before we get to the final outcome, I do want to just show you the last thing that I want to add to this mockup, just to make it even more realistic in a way, to fill up this space on the right and just make it seem a bit more realistic. I downloaded this image off on Splash, as well of just a passerby person walking past the store. Just want to add a walker to the mockup and then create a motion blur to it just to make it seem like it's literally captured in real life. So I'm just going to go to select subject, and I'm just going to literally just cut this person out and add him to my mockup. And I'm just gonna duplicate the person, Command J. And then I'm going to create a silhouette of him, which is gonna be my shadow. I'm just going to go to distort and just throw his shadow in front of him on the sidewalk. Go to filter, motion blur, make the ankle zero, so it's sideways, and I'm just going to blur him out like he's walking. And then as for the shadow, I'm just going to blur that shadow out as well, not too much. You can flip the perspective if you want it to be from behind. And there you go. It's just an extra little step that'll just make the mockup even more believable. Okay, and that's pretty much it. I'm just going to keep spending time just refining the shadows under the logo, maybe playing around more with the colors of the frame. Maybe I'll interchange the pink and the red of the storefront until I'm happy with the outcome. Okay, so I've played around with two color combinations, the pink store with the red signage, and the red store with the pink signage. And I think I prefer this one. It just looks a lot more neater. I think maybe the red store will be more attention grabbing in the street, the logo looks like it has more presence. And I just kept the frame around the window monochromatic, just darkened it a little bit. And that's the great thing about these mockups that it's just easy to change colors and sort of decide for yourself after laying out everything, what makes sense, and what doesn't. Alright. And then there you go. This is the final outcome for our customized store mockup. 7. Mockup IV: Human vs. Product: So this category of mockups is less about putting your logo somewhere just to showcase it, and it's more about showing the creative part of the brand, how your customers interact with the product. And it's more about creating a mini photo shoot in the presentation just so your client can envision the brand further beyond the logo and the packaging and all the collaterals. So I'm just going to double click my layer. And what I want to do here is the pose of the model is sort of as if she's holding something. So I just want to lay here the product, and I want to change the color of her clothes to the brand colors as well as change the background color. So let's go ahead and do the ladder first, and then we're going to place the product in her hand at the very end. So same exact process as all the previous mockups, we're going to go ahead to select and subject. Solid color fill and pick a blending mode. Alright, cool. And then next up, I'm going to pick one of the colors for her shirt. Invert the mask. Go in with your pen tool and start drawing over the item that you want the color to be applied to. Next up, we can start picking a color for her pants onto the pent tool. Just a nice pop of color there. I think I'm going to leave her tank top white as it is. It's a nice neutral color to break up all the colors, and I don't like to have more than three colors in the mockup or else it's just too much. So I think I like it so far, like this. I might adjust and tweak after we place the bore and assess afterwards. Okay, so now that we have the base and the brand colors in place, all interchangeable. I have here the mockup of my protein bar. This is what I use to present the client, and it's also a free mockup that I found. It's very basic. I don't need to go and find a bespoke for this. It needs to be functional, and that's what it is. But the great thing about this is that I can just reuse this bar here onto my bespoke mockup. So I'm just going to drag this over to my file here. And I just have now a reusable bar. So I want to place the bar in between her hands in a way that she's holding it. Now we just need to mask her fingers properly onto the bar. Okay, cool. And now we can just throw some highlights and shadows on the bar just so it pops more. We can do that by creating a new layer, select the bar itself, and I'm just going to use a white brush, honestly. Nothing too fancy. Okay, cool. And now we can actually take some time to play around with the colors. We're basically done. We just need to figure out which brand colors work the best that serve the product and the bar and the packaging most. Okay, so maybe I like this color combination a little more just because I feel like it makes the bar pop better with the pink against the turquoise blue, and I like the pop of lime yellow down below better. It just feels a bit more balanced to me. So feel free to keep playing around with your version until you feel like it looks balanced and easy on the eye and aesthetically pleasing. So the last thing we're just going to do, we're just going to add some shadows or a gradient behind the model just to give the image a little bit more dimension. Okay. Okay, and to just add a little bit more drama to the image, I just added some eyeshadow, the same color as the background, just to have a little bit more pop and a little bit more intension with the image, just to see like you thought about it for a little bit and that everything is placed there intentionally. And we're done. It's really that easy and quick and simple. It's all about the choice of your initial image in the beginning to make sure that it's easy to work with, easy to select and change the colors. And then something like this is easy to reuse afterwards. If you have a beverage brand that you're working on, you can place the beverage over here. It can really be any other product as long as it can fit in her hand. And if it's not that, then you can pick a similar image that has sort of the same function. Putting this image in a presentation next to, like, a brand message or on a poster or a billboard or something like that really helps the client envision their brand and gives them ideas beyond the typical logo suite. 8. Mockup V: Wildcard: Okay, so the Wildcard option is one of my favorite kind of mockups to do because you can literally be so creative. You're the ones putting the rules. It's not something the client will expect to see. I always like to include at least one of these mockups in every brand presentation I do, and it differs for sure from brand to brand. Essentially, what we're going to do, we're not going to do anything except change the colors of these shapes and the background and just place our bar onto this empty space right here, and we're basically done. So I'm going to go to select subject. And shift command invert to select the background. And just to make the red a little bit brighter and not this crimson shade, I'm just going to adjust the brightness of the original background by hitting that layer and selecting the mask part of it. And there you go. Background done. Of course, we're going to go in, like before to clean up those layers here. In between all the balls, you can just do that with the mask. But for now, I'm just going to quickly color the rest of these shapes until I like a certain color combination. What's left is to just drag onto this bar onto my mockup. And I just want to twist it and angle it in a way that it's just balancing on the other shapes. And I'm just going to select my whole image. I'm just going to slightly center it in the middle a little bit. Super simple, super easy, interchangeable. You can do this with other projects as well. You can swap the product with a different one, or you can take the same concept and just run with it however you want. Think of this as just like a very unique factor aspect that you're putting into your presentation alongside all the other mockups that do make sense and that are expected to be there. When you combine all of these together, you have a really rich, complex visual presentation of your brand. 9. Class Project & Final Thoughts: For your class project, I want you to create at least one custom mockup using the techniques we covered in class. It can be for a real brand that you're working on or just a fun personal project. Up to you. I'll also link the exact Unsplash images that I used in the resource section down below. So if you want to follow along and replicate some of the same mockups that we did, feel free to do so. Or if you want to venture out and pick your own images, then go ahead and do that and make sure to upload them in the gallery below. Remember, this is a skill that becomes easier and faster with practice. So the more that you build your mockup library, the more streamlined your process is going to be, and you're more likely going to be able to think and see like an art-directed, which will completely transform your brand presentations. If you found this class helpful, I'd really appreciate it if you could leave me a review down below as it helps more students discover this class, and it helps me continue creating more classes like this for you. I can't wait to see your custom mockups in the gallery. Thanks again, and I'll see you in the next class.