Photoshop mockups or a web tool? The honest difference
A layered PSD is still the best quality you can get from a mockup. Here is what a browser tool can and cannot match, and how close ours gets.
We sell both, so we have no reason to flatter either. This is the plain comparison.
What the PSD gives you
The layered scene at 6000 pixels, with the screen as a smart object, the mask, the reflection and the shading as separate layers. You can adjust each one. You can add a second element, retouch a scratch, change the blur, colour-grade the whole thing to match a campaign. The screen sits in a 16-bit document in the photo's own colour space. If the image is going on a billboard, a print catalogue or a hero on a site you will look at every day, this is the version.
What the tool gives you
The same photograph, the same measured screen, at 3000 pixels, composited in your browser in under a second. It does five things the PSD does:
- Warps your screenshot into the screen's real perspective, cover-fitted so nothing is stretched.
- Masks it to the real edge of the glass, with the same feathered mask as the PSD.
- Lays the real reflection over it with Screen blend at the strength we set in Photoshop.
- Lets the panel's own shading show through by a set amount, which is what makes e-ink look like e-ink.
- Softens the design toward the far edge to match the photo's depth of field.
Those five cover most of what the PSD is doing when you just want your design on the device.
What it does not do
No colour grading, no extra layers, no retouching, no output above 3000 pixels, no 16-bit. The blur is a good approximation, not Photoshop's lens blur. If you look at both renders side by side at 100 percent you will see that the PSD's edges and highlights are a touch finer. At the sizes a listing or a social post is shown, you will not.
How to choose
- Listings, ads, social, presentations, quick client previews: the tool. It is free, and a tool key unlocks full size on every scene for a one-off price.
- Print, large hero images, anything you will retouch or grade: the PSD. It costs more because it is the source.
The gap between them is real and we work to close it within reason, which is why the tool has gained the e-ink shading and the depth of field since it launched. It will not close completely, because a layered source file is a different kind of thing from a render. We would rather say that than pretend otherwise.
Try the mockup tool, free, in your browser.