: How do you create product mock-ups? To show the client what the finished design will look like on the actual product (brochure, business card, envelope etc.) How do you create branding/packaging

@Shanna688

Buy your resources

You will need a ton of experience to produce quality renders or realistic Photoshop comps. What people normally do, unless you really want to dedicate time and learn how to do this yourself, is buy actual ready made renders or mockups. Something that works with your artwork. There is so much quality content for sale out there you really don't need to learn 3d software for this reason alone.

Its just like with fonts, if you're reeeeally passionate, spend a million hours learning how to properly make your own, otherwise just buy one and get the job done.

Whatever you'll be doing as a resource, most likely somebody else has already done it and you can buy it for 3 bucks. That is, unless you actually want to make a living from creating and selling mockups and other reusable resources.

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@Nimeshi706

Only existing things can be photographed, for example products as soon as they have been made in the development lab.

Packages and paper stuff are available as blank white for photographing and simple ones can also be drawn in Illustrator or Photoshop. Complex ones need proper CAD application. In addition to proper geometric projections, Illustrator, Photoshop and CADs can give the lights and shadows in 3D mode.

See the following other discussion. There a nonexistent book is prepared for advertising: Imitate a photo realistic rendering of a book cover

Texts, decorative artworks and logos can be inserted. Geometric distortions such as skew and rotate make them to sit on planar surfaces. In Illustrator texture photos, logos, decorative art drawings and texts are easily placed also onto simple curved surfaces. Same in Photoshop.

Highlights and shadows are easy if the materials are non-glossy. They're simply blurred and partially transparent white and black areas with proper blending mode (=hard light).

Highlights and shadows are much more demanding for glossy and translucent materials. With them the skill differences between the people really explode as the differences in the plausibility of the results and consumed time.

CAD software and also Illustrator and Photoshop for simple 3D geometries are great help. Illustrator and Photoshop cant handle reflections and translucent refractions automatically if there ere several objects. Those need hard manual work or photorealistic CAD.

Even if there are no difficult glosses and translucencies, it is not at all easy is to stay consistent in a multi-item layout (=same light, same projection). One must have a diciplined way to work for this.

As already mentioned, purchasing a kit for the layout can be a great help.

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@Michele215

Make a 3D render with a good photorealistic Render Engine.

I do not know what is the original packaging form, but you can simply simulate one. Thoose kind of images are just boxes and cylinders.

Use Blender and look for some basic tutorials there are a lot on the web.

Start with a business card pack:
www.google.com/search?q=business+card+blender
You then can render a white image to be used as a mockup... But the truth is once you have a Blender model you will not use Photoshop, but render the image directly.

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@Murray976

In many instances, people will purchase configured templates that are design to allow you to just change a Smart Object in Photoshop to include your branding. There are dozens of such templates on the web if searching for things like "Branding presentation psd", "Packaging presentation psd", etc.

You could configure all this yourself. You'd need good 3D application skills to create the overall setting with branding.

Or, you could actually use Photoshop's 3D capabilities in some respects. Although it is possible to create each piece in Photoshop by manually drawing/painting them, then put them all together.

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