Setting Up Your Templates
What makes a PSD work with the plugin, where templates come from, and how to organise your folder so every batch gives you exactly what you need.
Templates are the PSD scenes your designs get placed into — the photographed product shots, the styled flat-lays, the lifestyle images. Your PSD folder is one of the three folders you point the plugin at, and what you put in it decides exactly what comes out.
What Makes a PSD Work
The requirement is refreshingly simple: the PSD needs a smart object that's properly lined up with the product's print area. That's it. If a template has a correctly positioned smart object, the plugin can composite your design into it.
What "properly lined up" means
The smart object should sit exactly where the design would appear on the real product — matching its position, angle and perspective. When it does, your design lands in the right place automatically, on every template, every time. If a smart object is misaligned in the template itself, no resize mode will rescue it — the plugin places the design into the smart object exactly as the template defines it.
Getting the best out of that smart object is a question of how you export your designs — see the Resize Modes guide for the transparent-footprint workflow that makes placement pixel-perfect.
Where Templates Come From
Our template library
Ready-made, correctly aligned scenes across wood boards, slate signs, leather journals, plaques and more — browse them at themockupstudio.com. The smart objects are already set up, so they work with the plugin straight away.
Your own templates
Any PSD with a properly lined-up smart object works — including your own product photography, or templates from elsewhere. If you shoot your own products, you can build templates from those photos and use them exactly the same way.
Organising Your PSD Folder
This is the part worth thinking about, because of how batching works: the plugin processes every design against every template in the folder. Your folder isn't a library to browse — it's an instruction.
Drop in only the PSDs you want this design composited onto. Nothing more.
If your folder holds 12 templates but only 4 suit the design you're running, you'll get 12 mockups and throw 8 away — slower to process and more to sort through afterwards. Build the folder for the batch you're running, not as a permanent home for everything you own.
💡 Keep folders per product type: Rather than one giant PSD folder, keep separate folders — one for slate signs, one for wood boards, one for leather journals. Point the plugin at whichever matches the design you're running. Swapping folders takes seconds and every mockup you generate is one you'll actually use.
Build a Complete Listing Set, Not Just Mockups
Here's where this gets genuinely powerful. A template doesn't have to be a plain product photo. Anything with a smart object works — including info graphics.
Build PSDs that contain your listing furniture — information bubbles, dimensions and measurements, care instructions, material notes, size comparisons — each with a smart object where the design goes.
Put those in the folder alongside your product scenes, and a single batch produces the entire image set for the listing: the hero shot, the lifestyle image, the measurements graphic, the care card — all carrying that design, all consistent, all in one run.
For sellers listing hundreds of personalised designs, this is the difference between generating mockups and generating listings. The info graphics are built once and reused across every design you ever run.
What about templates with more than one smart object?
Templates can hold several smart objects — a product range shown in one image, a grid of colourways, a photo frame with both the frame and the picture area. Everything on this page assumes a single smart object per template; working with multiples has its own modes and folder rules.
Troubleshooting
I'm getting mockups I don't want
Every template in the folder gets used with every design. Remove the PSDs you don't want for this batch and run it again.
My design lands in the wrong place on one template
If it's right on every other template, the smart object in that PSD isn't lined up with the product's print area. Fix the alignment in the template itself.
My batch is taking a long time
Designs multiply by templates, so a large folder of each adds up fast. Trimming the PSD folder to the templates you actually need is the quickest way to speed a batch up.
Still stuck? Contact us at support@themockupfactory.com and we'll help you get your templates set up.
Next Steps
With your templates sorted, run a batch — or browse the library for scenes to add.