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There are many instances when you will want to simulate or mock up how a design would look printed out and photographed. It might be for a portfolio piece, it might be for a client to help them imagine a concept design, or it might just be for your own satisfaction at seeing how your work is going to look to the end user.
In this technique, we’ll use a bit of perspective and the very useful Vanishing Point filter to achieve some great results. I will apply this technique to Collis’ Sample Calling Card from a previous tutorial.
Step 1
First we choose something to be our background for the work. In my case, I chose a wooden table I have in my office. After that get a business card or a square piece of paper to use as reference and take a picture. Without moving the camera, get rid of the piece of paper and take another picture.
Step 2
Now let’s create our Perspective Plane using the Vanishing Point filter (Filters>Vanishing Point). A new window will open with the filter’s settings.
Step 3
Select the Create Plane Tool (C) and start creating a box using the business card as reference. After that, just resize the plane.
Step 4
With our plane done, now lets place our card there.
- Open the image you want to place on the grid. In our case it’s Collis’ card, and press Ctrl+A to select everything and Ctrl+C to copy it.
- Back to our tutorials file, create a new layer and go again to the Vanishing Point filter.
- Inside the filter’s setting box, paste the card.
- Now just move it and resize it until you find the position you like.
Repeat basically the same actions and place the other side of our card.
Step 5
To make our card more real, we will use the Layer Styles. Lets add some Drop Shadows to the front side of the card.
Click the right button of the mouse on the layer, copy the layer style, and paste it to the other side of the card’s layer.
Step 6
Select one of our sides, duplicate the layer, and convert it to a Smart Object. Add a Gaussian Blur (Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur). (Note: if you are not using Photoshop CS3, don’t worry about converting to a Smart Object.) Now just change the Blending Mode to Screen 45%.
Repeat the same steps for the other image.
Step 7
Now let’s organize our document. Try to use layer names that you will remember and group them in cards. After that select everything but the guides, group them again, and name the group "content." Duplicate the group and convert it to a Smart Object.
Step 8
You can stop here, but we’ll keep going a bit further to show you how to add a depth of field effect. With our “Content” Smart Objected selected, select all layers.
- Change the Feather Options to 80px and Anti-alias.
- Create a rectangular selection like the one I did. Invert the selection (Select>Inverse).
- Now Apply a Gaussian Blur again.
Notice that this will create that distance focus effect: everything gets blurry the further away it gets from the focal point.
Step 9
After that you can even apply a Diffuse Glow (Filters>Distort>Diffuse Glow) to make it look more real.
Conclusion
The Vanishing Point filter is definitely an amazing filter and it allows us to preview our work with more realism. The best thing is that it’s really easy to use. You could even place another texture for the table or add more objects to the scene.
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Wow! Nice tutorial Zee! I always wished I could do this with my card designs :-)
Nice work. Great tut. Seems a little over blurred to me though.
I like your tutorials very much, high five!
You are all doing a great job!
Anther way of creating depth of field: Lens Blur. Create a layer mask, apply a gradient (white in the center of attention, grey towards the distance and foreground) and apply Lens Blur. It creates an increasing blur and is very controllable because you can create the mask as precise as you like. Add a little specular highlight (in the Lens Blur pallet) for extra drama.
Nice tutorial – the Vanishing point tool is one of the most useful filters available to us, so its great to see different ways of utilising it. My one suggestion would be that instead of using the gaussian blur and diffuse glow – the lens blur filter might be more effective – and that the drop shadow should be a little more subtle, and less blurred
too fake…
wow..love that.looks real!. its possible to do without vanishing point..
thanks fabio!
Nice tutorial. I agree with Jonker though. The depth of field would look much nicer with the lens blur filter. It would create a create sense of realism.
Thanks for the tip Jonker, you are totally right.. And thank you all for the comments.
Cool, great tutorial & thx for the tip Jonker :)
Amazing
excellent!!!!!
Another nice one! I never figured out how the vanishing point filter works before…
I have to say it looks a little too fake – the blur is ok, but there should be some area that’s in focus (a solid band of area – not just the middle of the two cards)
Yeah, it’s a little too much blur.
Wow!This is great tutorial…:)
Putting print designs in a real life environment even before they are printed, awesome.
The end result is indeed a bit blurry, but it doesn’t make it less realistic. Photographs with a low depth of field look very similar to this. In fact, if you were to take a photo of actual business cards on a desk, you would probably want a low depth of field in order to draw more attention to the subject of the photo.
Again, a great tutorial. :)
I dont really like this one. sorry.
btw, site was down?
Overall, a masterful tut. Thanks so much!
I like the concept but the blur is far too strong. Try taking a look at small DOF shots and then readjusting the softness. It’s more gradual and not as strong at that angle.
Nice! Now I have an excuse to fuddle with the vanishing point filter. From the comments here, I will also be able to look into the lens blur. Thanks!
Great tutorial !!!!!!
Great tutorial, and I gotta say PSDTuts.com has the most original and informative PS Tutorials on the web! Keep it up!
Looks good up to Step 8, I personally wouldn’t continue past there as it still looks realistic at that point..
Nice work though.. Cheers for putting this info out to the world!
Great tutorial! You guys should do some more Text Effects, all the ones so far have been great!
Please add the Mac command key strokes to your tutorials or make sure you give the complete menu steps. That would be very helpful. Thanks for all of the great tutorials. Keep ‘em coming!
Wow! I love this site, it’s the only one I have a feed to, and for good reason. So informative, so original. Once again another great tutorial, seriously top notch.
Thanks for the tutorial!!
Another way of doing this is to take a picture of your cards. Seems like it would look a lot more realistic,
You could also do the DOF effect by creating an Alpha channel and putting a gradient of some kind in there. Then select the alpha channel and run your blur filter to get a smooth transition.
One thing I might suggest would be to put another object in the original photo. Something else on the table to give a stronger sense of scale. Right now, the only reference you have to tell the size of the cards is the wood grain of the table which doesn’t provide a strong visual clue.
It’s Great!!..
^^
while i like the work resulting from this tutorial, i have to admit i’m pretty disappointed with how it was written. there are a few things in here that weren’t really explained. in particular, i’m wondering why the author wants to group things into smart objects.
also, a small note: you actually *can’t* select guides in photoshop, so there’s no need to mention it.
To get the “focus blur” thing you can duplicate the layer, blur the new layer and use a gardient on a vector mask. I dont know, i havent tried but the result is probably not as good as this but its easier =P Nice tutorial though, i will try it when i have time. Keep up the good work!!
(ps. i would like to see some tips on how to make nice looking iPhone icons!)
Cool tutorial, but yeah, the final image seems a bit..overdone. I didn’t really know about the Vanishing Point filter before.
I’m having trouble using the vanishing point filter, though. It’s just greyed out on my menu no matter what I do. I’m using Photoshop CS2, does anyone know what I’m doing that won’t allow me to use the Vanishing Point filter? The Photoshop CS2 help files just say “use the filter”, like there’s no prerequisite to make VP usable, but I’ve followed the tutorial and tried a few things and it’s still greyed out as an unselectable option. I could really use some help :)
The diffuse glow is pretty high, it makes the entire table blurry. I think I’d go without the last step.
Great Tutorial!! :D
Keep it up! :)
Hi to everyone. Really a very useful tutorial. Thank you very much.
I want to see a tutorial: How can we create a relistic flag. I’ll wait for this tutorial. Thx :)
Your tutorials have the “man, i always wanted to learn how to do that!” written oll over. And the key element is that the result it’s at the best quality there is. Thank you for that!
nice. thanks for sharing. i would skip the last step though, a bit too glossed out.
Great tut, Step 8 imo looks good enough.
After that id be happy. :)
I’m wondering… Do you know exactly what to do step by step or do you try filters and stuff along the way as you’re working?
Anyway, great tut!
Not sure where to post this, but when i go to http://www.psdtuts.com/ i get an error, vs going to just http://psdtuts.com
@collis If you are reading this, there seems to be some error with the website when one goes to http://www.psdtuts.com/ (just as Nick pointed out)
It would also be good if you provide a way for visitors to contact you.
Cheers,
Arun
Nice, but it seems too out of focus. I would have liked to see more of the wooden table texture at the conclusion. ;)
Glad to see you guys are back up and running. I was sad, I thought I had loss a great resource!
Please change your site back to the old layout which looks alot better
Yup, the previous layout is way way better than this…
sorry about that.
Interesting, and i always thought you need a digital camera to achive this especialy when creating a presantation,
Nice one Zee,
Thanks
I like the new layout. It looks clean.
yeah… it cool
i;m translate to russian in my blog, ok?
Don’t worry about nit-picking the design. The whole point is to teach you principles and techniques so that you can go ahead and use them in your own designs (that you may nit-pick to death). :)
BTW, nice tut, thanks!