Make a print mockup

Kendall Plant is a designer, content creator, and art director whose unique creations incorporate nature, street photography, and even skulls. She works at Adobe as an associate creative director.

It was important to Plant that she use assets that work well together. The artwork roughly matched the dimensions of the book mockup that she found in Adobe Stock. The pages in this mockup are square, so she created a square design. Plant then opened her design and book mockup documents in Photoshop. 

To prep the design for layout, Plant used Shift+click to select all the print design layers, then chose Convert to Smart Object from the flyout menu of the Layers (Window > Layers) panel. Creating a Smart Object allowed Plant to go back and make changes to her page design even after it had been added to the book mockup.

With the print design ready, Plant chose the Selection (V) tool and dragged the new Smart Object layer to the tab of the open book mockup document. When the book document activated, she dragged the page design layer on top of the mockup and used Control+T (Windows) or Command+T (macOS) to open the Transform tool. She then repositioned and rotated the image to roughly match the angle of the left page.

Plant continued to align the image with the shape of the mockup by selecting Transform > Distort. Then she dragged each corner of the art to align with the corners of the left page.

Tip: You can also hold down Control (Windows) or Command (macOS) as you drag each corner.

She used additional Transform tools to reshape the design. Plant right-clicked on the image, chose Warp (Transform > Warp), then adjusted each handle to align the edges with the curves of the page.

Plant wanted to create a lighting effect to blend the page design with the mockup. To do this, she double-clicked on the page design layer to open the Layer Styles then clicked Gradient Overlay.  She clicked the Gradient field and chose the black, white gradient from the Basics category and adjusted the settings. With the Layer Style dialog still open, she dragged the gradient to reposition it along the seam of the page. She experimented by moving the gradient left and right to see how much of a shadow she wanted to create.

Still working with the Layer Style settings, Plant clicked the + icon next to the Gradient Overlay to add a second gradient and adjusted the Opacity and Scale. Then she dragged the gradient slightly to the left, away from the seam of the page. The effect created a shadow that transitioned from the darker one in the seam.

Plant completed the lighting effects by adding a subtle highlight. She clicked the + icon to add a third Gradient Overlay, set the Blend Mode to Screen, and dragged the gradient on the artwork to reposition the highlight over the left side of the page. When she was done, she clicked OK.

To blend the design with the grain of the paper, Plant applied some noise. She chose Filter > Noise > Add noise, changed the Amount, and checked the Monochrome box.

Create a showcase

Let others see how your design will appear in a variety of layouts using Transform tools and Layer Styles in Adobe Photoshop.