How to Create a Digital Product Box in Photoshop

Making a digital product box with Photoshop allows you to make your 2-D product packaging designs appear real and 3-D. Those qualities are essential for marketing a product that your potential buyers believe is real and valuable. An essential aspect of this project is studying existing product designs. Ask yourself what images draw you to a product and urge you to buy it. To give your 2-D designs the illusion of 3-D, use Photoshop's "Free transform" tool. This tool lets you shape 2-D images to simulate the distortion that human vision imposes on 3-D objects. Such distortions include foreshortening and perspective.

Instructions

1. Download or cut out several non-copyrighted images from the Web and print sources that illustrate the ideas or designs you want your product box to communicate. For example, if your digital product is software that organizes food recipes, you might collect images of food.

2. Take a digital photo of a real box that's roughly the size of a cereal box, but twice as thick. This box will serve as a reference for your box.

3. Click the "File" menu's "Open" command, then navigate to and double-click the box photo from Step 2. Photoshop will load the photo. Click the eye icon in the "Layers" window to hide the photo.

4. Click the Paintbrush icon from the tool palette to enter painting mode, and then click the upper color swatch at the bottom of the tool palette. Click a color you'd like to paint with from the palette that appears.

5. Drag on the canvas to draw the picture for your product box's front side. Observe your favorite images from Step 1 to help you decide what to paint and how to paint it.

6. Use Step 3's instructions to click the button that previously held the eye icon for the box photo. This action will reveal that icon again and make the box photo visible.

7. Click the tool palette's dotted rectangle icon to enter the "Rectangular marquee" selection mode, and then drag a selection region around your artwork.

8. Press "Ctrl" and "T" simultaneously to enter "Free transform" mode, which lets you, scale, rotate and position your artwork. A rectangle box called a "bounding box" will surround your artwork. This box lets you perform the transformations just mentioned.

9. Press and hold "Ctrl," then drag one of the box's square corner handles until it matches the corresponding corner on the front face of the box photo.

10. Repeat Step 9 to align the remaining corners of the bounding box with the corners of the front face in the photo. This action makes your artwork appear to have the same position, size, and orientation in physical space that the box face has.

11. Click the icon above the canvas that appears as a green checkmark to exit the "Free transform" mode, then repeat Step 4 through Step 10 for the remaining box faces to complete the digital product box.

References

• "Photoshop CS5 All-in-One For Dummies"; Barbara Obermeier; 2010