Box Art |
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Sometimes you
need to create a 3D software box, hardcover book, or
other box-like object in a pinch. It could be done the
long way by using a 3D program, or you could even take
a digital photo of the real item. However, a fairly
good result can be achieved with nothing more than a
2D image of the cover of the box and Photoshop. Here's
how:
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Start by acquiring the artwork
for the cover of the box. In my example, I scanned the front cover and
the side of a WarCraft III (by Blizzard
Entertainment) box. I included the side image because it will be
in view. If you'd like to use my images, download them:
Front Cover
Side Cover
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Open a new document with
a white background. For best results, you may want to make your image
a good bit larger than my example and scale down the final result to
your desired size. Create a new layer and go to Filter>Render>3D
Transform. Click on Options and make sure Display Background
is checked. Select the Cube Tool ( ), and draw a box. Focus on making the right panel the correct
side for the face of the box. Then select the Direct Selection Tool
( ) and click and drag the lower left corner in until the dimensions
resemble a software box.
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Select the Trackball Tool
( ) and spin the box around until you have something similar
to what I have to the left. You may need to adjust the Dolly slider
to scale it up or down in size. The important thing is that you end
up with a box that has three distinct sides, each in a different shade
of gray.
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Open your front cover artwork,
hit V to select the Move Tool, and drag the artwork into the
document with the box. Hit Ctrl+T (Mac: Command+T) to bring up
the Free Transform outlines. Shrink the front cover just small enough
to completely fit into your document. You may need to enlarge the border
of your document or move the cover art around to find the corners. (To
preserve proper dimensions, you can click on a corner and hold down
the Shift key as you are resizing it). Hit Enter to apply
the transformation. Tap 3 to reduce the opacity of the cover
layer to 30%.
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Go to Edit>Transform>Distort.
Click and drag the corners of the cover to the corresponding corners
of the front of the box.
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Repeat steps 4 and 5 for
the image of the side cover. Distort it to fit on the left side of the
box. Then increase the opacity of both the front and side layers back
to 100% by tapping 0 after selecting each layer.
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Fill in the remaining areas
of the box in a color that goes matches the cover (black in the example).
The easiest way is to select the layer with the gray box, hold Ctrl
(Command) and click the layer in the Layers Palette, create a new layer,
and fill the selection with black by hitting D followed by Ctrl+Backspace
(Command+Delete). Hide the layer with the gray boxes by clicking on
the eye left of it in the Layers Palette. Hmm, not too shabby.
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To finish it off, I corrected
the color of the front cover a little by going to Image>Adjustments>Channel
Mixer and adjusting the sliders for the red and green output channels.
Then, I selected the layer with the solid black box shape, right-clicked
it in the Layers Palette, chose Blending Options, and applied this Drop
Shadow.
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Tutorial
provided by: Spoono.com
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Tutorials: Photoshop |
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Learn how to turn 2D artwork into a 3D software box, hardcover book, or
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