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Create a Professional-Looking Product Advertisment Mockup


Crimson

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This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it

Create a Product Advertisement Mockup

version 1.0

I've come to realize that I haven't touched Paint.NET for at least half a year now. Feeling rather nostalgic, I decided to prove that I can indeed still use this program. What better way than to write a tutorial? Plus, I believe this has asked me some time ago how I made these things. This will be my first time writing. Bear with me.

 

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create a mock-up ad for a product. The tutorial will create a focus on said product and add effects and photos around it to make it more interesting and lively. To give you an idea, here's what the end result of the tutorial looks like:

 

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I'll start off by saying that this tutorial is not for the complete beginner. There will be a few smaller steps that I will not explain in detail; one, because I assume you already know how to accomplish such, and two because this is not a concrete, follow-verbatim tutorial. There is a lot of room to detour here and there. With that said, think of something you want to advertise, find some free time (it's rather long) and crank up the creative juices! Here we go.

 

1. Start with a new canvas. I chose a 850x1100 resolution.

 

2. Fill the canvas with black (#000000).

 

3. Using the brush tool with a large brush size (around 100-150 for me), Put a few splotches of color that coordinate color-wise in the general center of the image. Don't worry about making it look neat or pretty right now.

 

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4. Apply a Gaussian Blur at 200 px.

 

3

 

5. Since I think the colors are a little too bright, I'm going to tone it down a bit. To achieve the effect I like, I'm going to make a new layer, fill it with black, and turn the opacity down to my liking. When I'm satisfied, I merge the layer down.

 

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6. Open up the image of the product you want to create an advertisement for; in my case, the Palm Pre (Caution! 3610x6000 image!). This image has a white background, so I'm going to use my preferred method to extract the image and make sure there are no white specks floating around afterwards. (In this case, the magic wand was enough since the image was so large, when I resized it down, the white specks disappeared. Try to find as large of a stock image as possible, as it gives you more to work with, and you can always resize down.)

 

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7. Load the extracted image into the working canvas, on a new layer. I put mine in the center using Align Object, but the composition is entirely up to you.

 

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8. Now, we're going to spice the image up. I'm going to use this image of grass and put it underneath my product in order to create a more realistic, natural environment. (If you want to use this image, you need to sign up for a stock.xchng account if you haven't already. It is completely free, and it becomes an extremely valuable resource if you ever want to do photo manipulation.) Copy/paste the image in a new layer underneath the product, and make it slightly smaller. Position the image so that the grass extends around the base of the product.

 

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9. There are two ways of completing the next step: alpha masking, or transparency gradients. If you are familiar with masks and can duplicate this procedure with them, I suggest you use that method as it is more versatile. However, I am going to explain the process using transparency gradients. After de-selecting the image, make sure your gradient setting is on Transparency and Linear, then start creating gradients from around the base of the product outwards.

 

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10. Repeat this process until the grass becomes a somewhat in the shape of an oblong oval around the base of the product.

 

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11. Next, duplicate the grass layer and put the copy above the product layer. We are now going to give the image a sense of depth, by creating a foreground with the grass that slightly overlaps over the product. Using the Transparency adjustment, return the opaque-ness of the image to this new layer. Then, using the same gradient techniques, blend out the hard edges again. Be sure to make the gradients that are facing upwards, towards the product, slightly shorter, to give the grass some volume.

 

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12. To make it slightly more realistic, I'm going to give the phone a shadow. Duplicate the phone layer, the go to Hue/Saturation in the Adjustments panel and turn Lightness all the way down. Move this new black layer underneath the original phone.

 

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13. Go to Rotate/Zoom and move the shadow into a position that looks like the shadow lies flat and extends behind the phone. Apply a Gaussian Blur at around 30-40 px. Re-adjust the position to your liking. If you think it's too dark, you can turn the opacity of the layer down a bit.

 

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14. I will now add a glowing aura around the phone. On a new layer behind the phone, I used the paintbrush again to brush on a rough frame along the top and sides with light blue-green colors. Gaussian Blur around 80 px. I think it's a little too big, So I used transparency gradients again to make the glow a little smaller.

 

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15. Some more glow effects. Set your primary and secondary colors to ones that you want to use for these effects. Using Random Shape Fill set to Circles, I'm going to render a bunch of dots in two different hues. Set Fill Color to Primary and Secondary, select use Transparency, and you can play with the other settings to your liking

 

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16. Again, with transparency gradients, fade out the dots around the edges, so only the ones clustered around the middle remain.

 

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17. Next, use the Eraser tool to completely blot out selected dots. This prevents the cluster from looking too uniform and round.

 

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18. Repeat steps 15-17 one or two more times to build up layers of different types of dots. Try playing with the color, the dot size, transparency, layer blend modes, etc. Also, in my image, I put one layer on top of the phone layer.

 

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19. Almost done! The last effect we're going to add is more circles, but this time just the lines. Use the Ellipse tool and draw several circles on separate layers, each layer with varying thickness, size and opacity. Place them all so that part of them are covered by the product.

 

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20. Now you can add the text for your advertisement. Think of where to put it. Bottom? Top? Centered, to the side? Where should each piece of text go? I centered my text at the bottom of the image, but you can put yours where you see fit.

 

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21. You're finished! After some tweaking, again, this is what my final product looks like.

 

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This was a very simple example of one type of product advertisement involving the product as the main focus and effects and photos to complement the image. There is truly an infinite amount of ways you can customize this to your on liking.

 

Edited by toe_head2001
Fixed broken plugin links
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First can i say this is an amazing tutorial, I'll get onto making something with it pronto :D . Secondly, what is the font that you used for the tagline "thinking a head is a beautiful thing"?

retrofont.jpg

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This is a really well done tutorial and I applaude you for it. It looks in-line with what it was meant to look like. It's clean and greatly done. I wonder if a reflection would have helped it out, but it looks good the way it is.

green.png

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Awesome tut :D Gonna try this when I get the time :D

EDIT: I think this is AWESOME :D Even though it's not made as an ad.

th_RockLeewallpaper2.png

^Warning, excessive overuse of smileys above!^

Kairyukasig-1.png

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Here's my go at this awsome tutorial ;)

PS3advertisement.png

I think i did a pretty good job. When i was about halfway through, a thought crossed my mind: "Why the hell am i doing this so small?". It was to late to change the size so i just though: "Meh".

Great tut 10/10

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309826w.png

I'm a newbie to PDN, kinda. I just tried this, 'cause I like it a lot.

Great job on the awesome tut, excuse my not-so-great attempt!

And, ahah, for all of you who do not understand the picture, it is for a movie;

Rocky Horror Picture Show.

(:

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