How to add your printed art to a Canva mockup
To sell your art or design, it needs to be presented in a visually pleasing way. This can be tricky if you don’t have the necessary photo skills, equipment or props – not to mention the time to fiddle with arranging things every time you need images of your art, and then having to edit them and choose the best ones.
It’s easy enough to add piece of digital art or design into a mockup, but what if your art is painted or drawn onto paper or another surface? How can you get it into a digital mockup?
You’re about to find out, and it’s really easy.
What you need
- The piece of art you want to use
- Your smart phone with camera
- Canva desktop (easier than mobile)
- The Canva mockup template you want to use.
Step 1: shoot
The first thing you’re going to do is photograph your art with your phone. The best lighting is always outside on a cloudy day. No flash. Alternatively you can photograph it in front of a big window in natural lighting. You want to aim for minimum shine and low contrast. Using the flash will add a shine to your art and will also increase the contrast.
When you’re photographing your piece of art, do it on a flat surface, not stuck to a wall. Try to keep the top, bottom, and side edges of your art parallel with the camera frame, and leave a bit of extra edging for cropping.
Placing a piece of white paper underneath your art if you can as it helps improve the lighting.
Step 2: crop
If your phone allows you to edit the photo you took of your art, then crop it down on your phone before you take it over to Canva. Otherwise, upload it to Canva and crop it there. (Make sure that the piece of art you’re using will fit in the mockup frame you’ve chosen.)
Step 3: edit
Depending on the sort of phone you have, you may be able to edit your art photo using your phone image editor. What you want to do is lighten it up a bit. I like to use the Snapseed app for this because it does a better job than my phone or Canva. If you don’t have a good phone editor, or don’t want to download Snapseed (it’s free, by the way), then brighten your art photo in Canva, and then increase the contrast a bit. Sometimes this reduces the image quality so it’s not my best option.
Step 4: add to mockup
If you’ve cropped and edited your image on your phone then upload it to Canva and drag it straight into the frame of the mockup you want to display it in. If you’re cropped and edited it in Canva then all you need to do is copy it and paste it into the Mockup you want to use.
Step 5: customise mockup
The last step is to customize the mockup so that it matches your art. You could use similar colors to those in your art, or contrasting colors, depending on the aesthetic you want to convey.
Step 6: download and share
When you’re done, all you need to do is download your mockup and share it!
Bonus tip!
If you have lots of printed art or designs that you want to display digitally, photograph, crop and edit them all together and upload to Canva so they’re ready to use whenever you want to add one to a mockup.
Remember to use #madewithmockupscene when you share your designs so I can reshare them.