Transcripts
1. Intro The Secrets of Automating Mockup Production: Hi there. My name is Dolores NASCAR, and I'm an artist living in Sunny Manitoba, Canada. Are you looking for a way to batch process a whole bunch of images from all cups? One of the things I had to do recently was to take all of my artwork images and tried to put them on to mock ups. I had hundreds of artworks ready for mockups, but I really didn't want to individually have to put them on the mock ups myself. I tried to research a way that I could batch process my images onto the mockups. And what I'd like to do right now is save you the time and energy. It took me to research all this and explain it to you in one little class. In this course, I'm gonna teach you some automation processes that are going to blow your mind. We're going to use smart objects, droplets and photo shop actions to do this. I've also got a juicy bonus in less than five, a script that you can use with any action and run hundreds of files totally automatically. This class is ideal for artists. They're heavily involved in social media or setting up a P o. D style store for the first time, like on chop if I or Big Cartel or for your Etsy shop. If you have a bunch of Newark to sell, I'm gonna show you how to produce an initial mock up or use mockups that you purchase. The great part about it is you're going to set up this mock up just once, and then I'm going to show you the automatic process for putting all of your separate artworks onto that one walk up. Can you imagine all that time you're going to save to take this class? It would be great if you had some photo shop experience, but I'm gonna teach it in a kind of a step by step way. So I'm really hoping that even if you haven't used for a shop too much, you'll be able to follow along. I think you're gonna be pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to do this process. Are you ready to get started? I'll see you in less than one
2. Lesson 1 Smart Objects: I think guys are glad to see you went past my introduction and you're here in less than one with me. Teoh, figure out how you're gonna go about putting your artworks onto your mockups. So the first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna open up on walk up here and we're gonna talk a little bit about smart objects and how useful they can be in this process. So I've got tons of different mockups that I use for my online store and in all of the mall cups, I have a smart object. The cool thing about the smart object is that you just open it up, replaced image, save it and close it and you're done. What we're gonna do is automate the process of taking this original image file and replacing it with a new image. One of the great things about smart objects in 40 shop is that you can edit the contents or source data if the source content was prepared. The illustrator it opens in that program. If the content is Photoshopped based file, it'll open in photo shop. So I'm gonna show you how that works in my actual document. So you'll see here in my layers panel that I have a smart object with my artwork for the plaque mounted art that ideo I bought this small cup, and it's pretty cool because it's got all these parts that can be moved around. Does my main set up for my 12 by 16 plaque? I can right click on the layer here and go to edit contents or go into the layers menu and down to smart objects. I never use this menu, so it's hard to find. Anyways, here it is smart objects, and I want to replace the contents of the file so I could do that here Or I can right click on the layer. Another hit replace contents, and that's going to take me to my main file of 12 by 16 artworks. That's the one way I can replace it. The other way I like to do it is go to open up that link object and it opens up my actual document. And as you can see here, it's the exact artwork that I have as my smart object. So it has opened up the link file, which is this one here. So if I want to replace it with another one. It just select all on my ultimate file. Paste it in here. Command E will flatten it into one layer over here in the background pit save. Then go back to my documents. Uh, the new artwork is in here. This is super important, because the action that we're going to create has to be able to do this exact process that we just did. What we're gonna do is we're gonna automate the process off taking this original file and replacing it with this one so that we can update and save the mock up with the new artwork placed in the same position. So that's basically it for smart objects. That's exactly how it's gonna work for us. And our next step is to create the action that does that whole process for us automatically . So our next lesson will be all about creating that action. Do you imagine all that time you're going to save
3. Lesson 2 Preparing Artwork Files with Actions : welcome to a lesson, too. So in this lesson, what we're gonna do is we're going, Teoh, get all of your image is ready and size correctly so they could be used in this script to create the image files that you need. These are the image files I'm gonna use for our little experiment to show you right now how to create an action to do this sort of a process. Right now, these are thumbnails that I've sent into my agent, and luckily, there consistently sized, and I've got one of them open on my screen. And what I want to do is save them to a consistent size. I'm gonna do them five by seven at 300 pixels per inch because that's the size that will work on this mockup that I'm using. And what I want to do, of course, is create an action to do that because I want to be able to resize all of the images in that folder really quickly. So the first time I went to do this process was to create mark ups for the plots that I carried for my shop. If I store, I had hundreds of artworks, So it was really worth it for me to figure out the process. This is the size of my image file says how maney images I currently have repped is over 700 . Normally that I had 20 or 30 different products and I wanted to put my artwork on all of them. So you do the math 30 times. 700. It definitely didn't want to make individual mockups, so it was really worth it for me to figure out the process. It took me a while to iron out all the kinks, but I've got it all figured out, and I'm going to share that information with you. So if you've never created an action before, I'm gonna show you how to do that right now. This is the panel that you need to have open in order to create your action. I'm gonna pull out here so we can have it nice and big. And as you can see, I I have a lot of actions. There are so many repetitive tasks that I do. So I see of actions for pretty much everything just makes everything go so much faster. So the first thing I want to do is click on this icon at the bottom. That looks like a little page. So I'm gonna create this new action. I've called it resized to five by seven at 300 peopie I and I'm just gonna save it into my default actions for now. So as soon as I hit record, it's going to start recording every single one of my actions that I do. So what I really should have done before starting to record is set up my cropping to be at the five by seven size, so I'm going to temporarily stop it. So this button down at the bottom look, stop it. And what I'm gonna do is go over to my crop tool. I'm gonna make a new crop preset that call it five by seven and click. OK, so I'm gonna go back to my resized to five by seven, and I'm gonna start recording again. So this round dot Here is what I'm gonna press. And as I'm recording, you can see that the dot remains red, So I'm gonna hit my preset. You can see up here that it's still selected at five by seven and I'm going to just click in the image area. Now, it's very unlikely that I would always have the crop reset to the very middle of the page. So I know that what we're gonna have to Dio is make an adjustment to that action afterwards and will do a stop on it. But we'll do that after we've created the whole action. So now that I've got it selected, the crop size is exactly what I want. I could hit this check mark and effectively cropped it to the five by seven proportion that I need, and I need to double check that the sizes. Okay, so I'm gonna go into my image size that could see here that it is not set by seven. And that's what I needed to do. And I need to do consistently on all of them. So I'm gonna recorded as part of my action. I'm still recording, as you can see down here with this red Dodge, and I'm going to resize it by going to select the link ings that I can actually type in exactly seven because he hear everything set by by seven hit. Okay, So that has been recorded in my action. And so really, this is exactly what I need. All the steps were there. I'm gonna stop recording by pressing this little block button here. So I would never knowingly crop my image with something like this, right in the very middle of it. I want to be able to choose how I crop it. There's very little likelihood that it would always be in the very center of that original file. So I'm going to go back to my original image as it was when I first opened it. And I'm going Teoh make a change in my action. So currently, if I was to look at my action, you can see all of the different changes that I made here. They're just listed in the exact order that I did. Um, the one thing that I want to do was to be able to adjust the crop before I actually kit, return or commit. So in order to do that, this little box is gonna help me. What I'm gonna do is click on that box. And then when I actually used the action, it will stop at this exact spot here. And allow me to make the choice of how I want my image to be cropped. I'll demonstrate how that works. So I want to play this action now. And these controls down at the bottom are gonna let me do that. So this will, Right, facing arrow is the play button. So I'm gonna play my action and you'll see that it stops right here at this crop selection . So this allows me, Teoh, move my image around until I find a spot that I like for my cropping. And so whenever I use this action, even if I use it as part of my overall script, it's going to stop right here and allow me to make the choice, Thinking about something like this and I am going Teoh commit now and the rest of my action will just play, and it finishes up with my image being the exact size I need, which is five by seven. The last thing I want to point out here is that this file now has overridden the original. So if you go back to your original folder, you'll see that that image is now in the new size of five by seven. So that's really important to remember, because this will overwrite that original file. So I always like to make a folder that duplicates my original thumbnails to be sure that I don't overwrite things that I don't want over written. I'm going to re dock my actions here into this panel, and I'm gonna show you now how the use of that action is going to help us quickly resize our artworks back here in my main folder of Created another folder called Resized to five by seven, that's gonna be the destination for all my resized images. So back and forth shop here I'm going Teoh automate Batch and I'm gonna grab action that I lost created, which is the resize to five by seven. I'm gonna choose the folder where I'm getting the images from you Choose the destination, which is the folder that I just named resized to five by seven. And then I'm gonna hit Okay, here and now it's taking the images that I have in that folder and one by one, it's going to allow me to be sized. Um, of course it's stopping where I wanted it to so that I could reset the cropping hit OK? And then the next one will pop up. That was in the folder Do the same thing moving again. And just like that, I am opening, closing, saving besides ing all in one step. Just imagine how much time this would have taken if you were individually opening, dropping, revising, renaming huge pile of documents. Creating Photoshopped actions helps us to automate the process and create all of our images to be absolutely the right size that we need. Believe me, this saves a lot of time and it took me a while to figure this one out. In the next lesson, we're gonna go a little bit more in depth as Teoh. How this is all going to work together.
4. Lesson 3 Actions and Notes: in this lesson. What I'm gonna do is talk to you a little bit of boat photo shop actions and how that actually fits into this whole process of batch processing all of your images to go into the mock up. So the first thing I want to do is give you a couple of valuable pointers for actions like adding notes to prompt you. What I'm gonna do is switch out of this layout that we've been working on in less and one and two and temporarily switching to a document or creating instagram images with a local inserted that will give me the opportunity to show you all of these different things that you could do with your actions. I'm gonna demonstrate that by adding a local to my Leo just gonna have to be a stop in my action. I want to make sure that there's a bit of instruction that's left for me in a note, just in case. It's a long time before I use this action again. You'll see what I mean as I work through this lesson. So I think what I'll do is I'm going Teoh, open up one of my originals let's say I'm gonna create a new action and I want to save it for the proper proportions for Instagram. So we know that would be a perfect square. I'm gonna set my crop ratio right now before I get into recording the action and I'm gonna do it is a square. So I go into my actions panel, I want to go into my default actions and I'm gonna record a new action. Remember, we press on this little page icon, we're gonna call this one instagram with logo. So I'm now recording, As you can see, with this red dot here at the bottom, that's my record button. And I've preset so that my cropping is perfectly square and I'm going to hit return saying us is I don't want to save it into this originals folder have created another folder. I'm going to save them into this folder Instagram with logo and I'm gonna hit save. And now I hit Stop because I know that I have all the steps that I need here. Only thing is, I haven't got my logo on it yet, so I'm gonna do that. Now I'm gonna make sure I'm recording and I'm going Teoh place my local file. Now that my logo was placed, I want to align it in this lower right hand corner. But I'm not going to just move it randomly by hand like this. I'm going to select both layers. I'm gonna ally into the lower right hand corner. I'm gonna select my logo and I'm going to use the arrow keys along with my shift key to move it away from the edges. Another way you could move it is to go under filter to other and down to offset where you could type in the exact measurements. Or you could use, transform and take the location up here in your options bar. I just find it's faster to just use my arrow keys, especially on a small document. So it looks like a good amount of framing there. I'm happy with that. And the very last thing I want to do is check the image size so I can optimize it for Instagram. So I know that the width for Instagram is 10 80 by 10. 80 and I can reduce the resolution. I'm going to reduce it. 250 pixels per inch and I'm gonna hit, okay, but a stop recording, cause I've already got my save in my action there from earlier. So let's open up one of the original files, test the action and see if it works out. Okay, So select the actual action, play it and it's given me a warning that it can't do this particular step here. Move current layer, and I can see why. That's because I don't have it selected here. So I'm going to go back to this de Select on gonna hit record. I'm going to select my logo. And now that's added select logo to one of the steps in the action. I can stop recording, and I'm gonna be selected just to test it and press play and selected it, and it looks like it's going all the way through to the saving stage. So I'm going Teoh been shot up and let's open it up. It looks like the placement of the logo is good. But, you know, I'm not sure that I like this square logo. I do have a round logo and I think I would like to have the choice of whether to have the square or the round local in position there. But how can I do that? Well, there is a way, Way back here in the script where I had the place command, I could just put a stop in there. It would stop. And there I could choose the round logo instead. Let's see how that works. We've been open that original again and let's run the action. So I've got my document open here, and I'm gonna play my action from the top. It stops for me to crop, and it stopped for me to select my logo. I'm going to select the round local this time gonna hit. Okay, Once I hit return, the action will continue. Now, here's another problem. Of course, the select that we had earlier for aligning was set to the other local that I have the square local. So I'm gonna stop this for a second. I'm going to de select, and then I'm going to record selecting this local instead. And I'm going to stop. So if we start playing my action right from here and looks like I forgot to check it here or uncheck it here, so I'm gonna also uncheck that where local here and continue to play, and I forgot to check it there and continue to play. I've got this one saved originally with that square logo. So I think I'm just gonna actually name this one round local so we can identify it. There's my finish layered file. Let's open up the thumbnail with the round logo here and double check. It looks like that worked. Now there's a lot of other things I would do to this looking at it. Now I can see that the logo to me is still too big and I probably change the color on that . But you've got the idea of what you have to do to make adjustments. As long as you check or uncheck on the actual you don't want affected and put a stop or a pause in the actions where you do you want to make changes, everything will work for you. So I just wanted to show you that little tidbit before we go on. So the only problem with that whole action we created is that I don't use this again for six months or a year. I may not remember why it stops and I don't know really what it wants me to do. So I want Teoh just a little note to myself. That reminds me that what I wanted to do was to choose a square or the round logo. So in order to do that, I go to the spot in the action where it says place. Then I go to this fly out menu with side the options menu, where the three or four lines are, and I choose Insert, stop. So this were dialog Box comes out. And, you know, if you didn't know what it was for, you'd be like, Okay, now what? What this is is a place to record the action that you want yourself to take when you're executing this action of time in the future. So what I want to do is choose between the round and square logo I'm gonna put in this folder. So I'll make sure that I keep these locals in the same folder where I'm going to say my droplet that I'm gonna create for this after that's gonna be our next step. Basically, what I'm doing is just giving myself instructions so that I know what the heck I'm supposed to do when this pops up, and I'm also gonna cough this little box at the bottom that says allow, continue, and that will make sure that after I do this adding the logo that the action will continue . Like like okay, and see about this. Stop here. And what I'm gonna do is put above the place, step in my action. So let's check this out and see how it runs When you with the rest of our action was running. Okay, so I'm gonna go right to the top. I've opened up my full sized document again, and let's plate and see. Now this alert comes up that tells me to choose between the round and square logo in this folder. Believe me, if you don't put this in here, you're gonna forget, or you gonna put the wrong size in or something is gonna happen, and you're probably going to end up throwing away and redoing the action because it's just you just don't know what to do. So I'm gonna kit continue here and given the option now, Teoh, choose the local, so I'm gonna choose that round logo. Which one? Wasn't it was this one and I've been hit. Place it, okay? And because I said continue. Soon as I hit the return key to commit smart objects, it will continue. But one thing I need to do here that may have forgotten before I'm going to stop here and I'm gonna record he selecting the background and selecting that particular layer, and I'm going to start recording. And I'm gonna put that in here, and I'm gonna replace the one that was there. And this was a smaller logo that I created the preferred size that I was looking for. So that's kind of cool. So from now on, that particular action will always have that little note that comes up and tells me to choose one of the two locals. I just thought I should add that to your a little lesson here. So I think that's it for this lesson. In the next lesson, what I plan to do is explain a little bit more about droplets
5. Lesson 4 Droplets: you guys welcome back. We're unless and for now. And in this lesson, the concepts I want to cover our droplets and why we create them best practices for creating your droplets, the do's and dont's for creating them and when to use batch processing as opposed to droplets. So here we are in photo, Shaw and I'm gonna show you where both of those functions are located. They're both under the file menu and a subcategory of automates. So we've got both batch automation and creating droplets. 1st 1 on one explain is batch automation. And it's perfect for when you just simply want to use your action on a handful of files or you're just gonna do that automation process maybe once or twice. So I'm gonna hit this batch, and I met with this dialog box. I get to choose which of my actions that I want to use here and let's go to that resized to five by seven that we created in the first lesson. The source I want to use is a folder and I'm going to choose the folder. And that was my older of originals here. When I click choose and I'm gonna choose the destination folder? Yeah, I think I'm gonna make a new folder. In this case. I'm gonna call it resized to five by seven by batch processing. It is good to create a new folder so that it doesn't accidentally overwrite the files that you have in your originals folder. I'm gonna create the folder. You'll see it's within this folder. But it'll be resized into this new folder when choose that and I'm allowed to choose a different name. I'm not sure whether or not I've got an open command in my action. Actually, don't believe I dio so I'm going to leave that off. And I'm not gonna include this sub folders in the background. And in this case, I've only got five or six files in there, so it should go pretty quickly. Last thing I always do is create a log file for any errors, so I could just have it stopped for errors. But I don't like doing that. If I'm processing a whole bunch of files like 100 files, it could stop numerous times and you get confused, ID rather log the errors to a file, and I like to save it as errors and named for whatever process I was doing at the time. Or 12 by 16. Mark ups is gonna log it right here along with our original files. Save Anna, but he okay and it should go through the process. Now. Remember, my action had its stopping here of the crop so that I could move my image around to where I want it, and it will continue with the action as soon as I hit return and it's going through all my files. Let's take a look in my finder at what's happened to those files. And here's the batch with all the resized artworks, and it just numbered them simply with the number, because that's what I ended up choosing as the option for naming it. Personally, I would probably have named it with the file name, but I just want to speed up the demonstration for you and looks like there were no errors. So let's take a look at that text. Yeah, it just says Start batch and and batch. It all worked. There are no errors recorded here. He did have errors. They would look something like this. I used a different action just to give it a go and you can see, Hear what it's saying is other command was not available. That was an action that wasn't intended to even work on these. But I just want to show you what that would look like if you did have errors. Otherwise, it looks like it successfully created all my five by seven files. If that was all I was doing, just those five or six files, I would definitely use the batch processing option. But personally, I like creating droplets or a process that I know I'm going to be doing repeatedly and I go under automate. And this time I go to create the droplet because we just chose the precise If I buy seven, it is the one that I have selected here. It pop right in there so perfect. This is exactly what I want to dio. I want to beat this droplet and save it when I saved thes droplets. I always think very carefully about landing how I'm going to use them. I know that the resize to five by seven is droplet that I would use when I'm creating mockups for my Shopify store so I'd probably save it in my shopping mall cops folder. So I would go to where those air located and you can see I do already have older here or my droplets, but I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna save it here in my 12 by 16 plaque Small cup folder. I'm going to call it re sizing 25 by 7 12 by 16 plaque mock up that way. It saved exactly where I need it. So I'm gonna click, save and probably do the same thing as a destination for the five. By sevens, I would choose a folder five by seven. And I put that in the same folder here. Gonna label it as resized to five by seven for 12 by 16 mockups. It would help if I actually spell to be sized correctly and select that folder and hit. Choose down here in the bottom corner. It's gonna pick the files where I need it to and save the droplet to where I needed to. And this time I'm going to have the regular document name. Make sure that works out exactly the way I want. I'm looking at everything here and click OK, and it looks like nothing happened. But if I go into my shop of five folder where my mock ups are located right here, it's my mini program. Okay, so the first time I used this literally, my mind was blown. So this is my little mini program. But that's what the droplet icon looks like. It's Ah, Blue Arrow with the photo shop symbol in its on way. This works and open up a new window here and I'm gonna locate that original set of files. These are my original miles. Just imagine that was, let's say, a file of 50 artworks. Check this out. I'm going to select them all, and I'm going to drag them onto the droplet icon. And I had bought a shop closed. This would still run. It has resized those mockups automatically. Right here in the same folder is where I had located my droplet is not neat. Oh, I've got a pile of these droplets and I bought them for all kinds of different purposes. One of the main things I noticed is that if I didn't absolutely identify what that droplet was for in the title, I would probably lose track of it, and I will always now, but it right in the spot where I need it. You see, over here I've got a couple for other purposes, creating card fronts, resizing and cropping for mockups. That's probably the same as the one we just created together. And I also have a master folder where I keep all of my droplets just in case. And just because I'm getting old, I've also got them written down in a notebook to keep track of them with notes explaining what each of them do now that pretty much wraps up unit or here. I just really want to reiterate that droplets work best if you don't have any toggle boxes . In the step of the less variables, the better the crop in variable, for example, I probably would have done all of my cropping first so that I wouldn't have to worry about that as part of my droplet. It seems like it's not too bad when you're doing only five or six files, but you certainly don't want to be having to sit and press the return key or 200 files. Another thing is that before using the droplet. I always voted my preferences and changed my levels of undo to a low number. 40 shop has been known to crash. It has to process too much and just think about it. If you've got 40 levels of undo that, it's remembering all of those steps, and it's just really unnecessary during this process. What you're running your droplet. Okay, also, just reminder to make two copies of the droplets and save one in a master folder and the other in a really sensible spot. Remember to check the override action, save as commands to ensure that the files created by the droplets go to where you want them to. And just a reminder that really, if you're doing just a couple of files or you've got 20 things to do with a particular action, just use the batch. It's really no necessity for making a droplet that pretty much wraps up lesson for So let's go back now to the production of our 12 by 16 mockup. See in the next lesson
6. Lesson 5 Script Smart Object Replacement: So we finally made it to lessen five, and I've saved the most delicious tidbit till now. In this lesson, I'll show you how to use the script called Replaced Smart Object Image, which I found after a ton of research. If you open the script before using it just to check it out, you'll see the office name. And I thank him for this script that has saved me so much valuable time. So one of the great things about the smart objects and photo shop is that you can edit. The contents were sourced at up, so we're going back to the mockup that we played within less and one. We'll use the script to open the smart object and replace the smart object image. Then save it and close it. And it'll save the main image as a. J. Paige and you're done and it'll do a whole folder full of images. Let me demonstrate. So here we are, in our file that we created in less than one. And remember, I have a smart object here. That's what I'm gonna replace with my new artwork images. So I'm gonna run just a quick short test. So you can see exactly how that works. So I'm gonna go to scripts here under the file menu number and browse and locate my script . So I've got it saved in my mock up main file folder. I'm gonna open it up. I met with this screen and at versus totally confused me because I didn't know what I it was stopping here. But if you look up here, it says two, please select the files. So this is what you dio I'm gonna use those original watercolor five by sevens that we made . I'm gonna select all six of these files, and it's gonna instantly go through the process of replacing the artwork on my mock up. It'll stop on the last one so you'll see the last one come up here in a second and let's just go to the finder and take a look at that file folder. You'll see that those six images six new mall couplet else have been created just like that . So the cool thing about it is you didn't have to do the process. You need to have to open up each of the files, place the image in the smart object image file. Save it, rename it close at any of those steps. Those were all done automatically. So I'd like to demonstrate now how that works with a huge folder of files. So before starting, I'm just gonna clean up this folder of it. We're gonna throw in those six files that we just made. Name this laurels, and let's try making a folder. We're gonna call it Master 12 by 16. Mock ups were put the script right into that folder. So I'm also gonna move the 12 by 16 walk up into that folder because wherever that mock up is where all of the image files will be placed were back in my main mock ups set up, and I'm going to actually go back to when I just opened it and make sure we have the smart object layer selected. Then I'm gonna go to my script, select it hit open, asked me to select my files, gonna go to my assets, and the file folder that I'm gonna use for that is this folder. I'm going to select them all. OK, so this is the time that we have as we're starting 2:33 p.m. And when the process is over, I'll tell you where it ended. Okay, so I know my process is completed because this is the very last file, and you can see the time that has elapsed. And let's go take a look at that file folder and that, uh, right here where I had my script and my mock up all of my files received. So I want you to imagine how long it would have taken for you to have individually opened up each of those walk up files Should those different artworks to put into the mock up to replace a smart object to save it out. And all that jazz. That's how much time this script has saved you. So thank you so much circle be. I hope you've gotten a lot out of this course and have learned how to use all of the automation processes that are going to make your workflow so much more efficient. You've done a lot of work, and I applaud your progress. I hope you've managed to take away a few tips and tricks and can use them. And I look forward to seeing your mockup examples below. If you're posting on social media. Don't forget to tag me and use the hashtag Delores aspirin slash scale share. That's a tongue twister. If I ever heard one that way, I can see your awesome work to please share this course to any other artists that you know . If you have a question, please post them in the community section and I'll reply as soon as possible. Remember that if you've got questions about something, chances are somebody else's. The same questions too. So it's gonna help everybody out. Thanks again. So much for having gone through this entire process. And I hope that you take a look at the other courses that I teach Was nice meeting you, and I hope to see you back again. Take care. Bye.
Delores Naskrent, Creative Explorer
