Adobe Photoshop Tutorials: 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.
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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 a Drop Shadow.
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Tutorial
provided by: Spoono.com
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