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Drag, Drop, Design: Testing the Ultimate Mockup Website
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Struggling with design mockups? You're not alone. We dive into a fascinating AI-powered solution that promises to eliminate those painful hours spent creating displacement maps in Photoshop. This browser-based platform claims to transform how designers visualize their work on everything from billboards to t-shirts with just a simple drag and drop.
The technology itself is genuinely impressive. When working properly, it automatically adapts designs to curved surfaces, matches background colors, and provides easy resizing options that would typically require complex Photoshop techniques. For professional designers who regularly need to show clients how logos will look on various products, this innovation could save countless hours of tedious work.
However, our hands-on testing revealed some significant hurdles. While the platform advertises 672 mockup templates, we discovered only 15 are available without a subscription—and they're mostly basic flat surfaces. All the truly useful curved mockups (like t-shirts) are locked behind a $16 monthly subscription with no trial option. For occasional users, the individual template purchase option at $6.99 might be more practical than committing to a subscription.
The value proposition here varies dramatically depending on your needs. If you're a professional designer regularly creating client presentations with multiple mockups, the time savings likely justifies the cost. For small businesses or occasional users wanting to visualize a single design, current pricing structures create significant barriers. We believe this technology represents the future of design workflows, but the business model may need refinement to reach its full potential.
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Introduction to AI Mockup Website
Speaker 1So I saw this video on. It's an AI website that does a specific task. I thought it was interesting this, like there's so many new tasks that AI is doing, this one's a very specific task, but I think it's it can be applicable applicable for certain people, and so let's take a look. Okay.
Speaker 2This is the mockup website of my dreams. To drag and drop mockup editor completely in the browser, no Photoshop files or smart objects, and the photography is super premium Billboard signage, shirts, hats, devices. It's so easy Drag in any image or video file format, slide it around.
Speaker 1It even automatically goes to the curve of the color to fill in any gaps and exports the exact specs for whatever platform you need.
Speaker 2You can get started for free comment mock-up and I'll send you the link plus a discount code for 25 off the pro plan.
Speaker 3So having a little bit of background in graphic design, especially the early days of my career, I've done mock-ups like that before and they were such a pain every time I had like, if there was something like with a texture or curve or something like that, you have to create like a what was called a displacement map, yeah, and you have to create that and then put your image over the displacement map and then do some blending modes to make it look good. Yeah, huge pain, and every time I had to do it I didn't have to do it a ton, but I had to do enough to where, but enough time, like I had to look it up every time yeah how do I do this again?
Speaker 3you know yeah and just to be able to do that, like if it actually works like that. To be able to do that in the web browser just instantly would be such a crazy time.
Speaker 1Yeah, I thought the cup was really cool, that as he dragged the uh logo, it curved around the curve. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, um, and so obviously, like it's not, like you can upload your own photos to this, this is what I would assume. You can't just upload your own photos to this.
Speaker 1They have specific photos that have all of it built in basically they have like pre-made displacement maps yeah, basically just whatever you put in it follows right, and so you can only use their photos, which I think limits you a lot, because if you're doing, let's say you're doing, I want to see it on a specific shirt, well, they better have a bunch of different shirt types, like baggy shirts that are like the oversized ones that are popular right now, or tighter shirts, like athletic shirts, like. You know what I mean, because if you only have one style, it's like well, I can't really use that because it's not the style of the brand I'm looking for.
Speaker 3You know what I mean it could be specific and so so you may still have to use some displacement maps and photoshop and things like that.
Speaker 1Yeah, but it'd be. It's pretty interesting. So I tested it and I went through and tested that. So, all right, let's see this. So I went to mannequin and, um, you hit the start for free. It kind of breaks it down into this section of out of home packaging, digital print, textile or vehicles, but it says that 672 mock-ups that's pretty cool right.
Speaker 1So it's kind of you kind of go through and see like the basic ones that they have just to start, and I want to do textile. I want to see like a shirt or sweatshirt or something. So I'm kind of going down and see they do have a white background, which is nice, right. But like the in bags and stuff, you see the guy's shirt, it's pretty baggy in the sleeves. It's like that's not the type of shirt I wear, right, it'd be cool to see if it can really make it look natural so I took oh good I was.
Speaker 1I was gonna say we should do that on like one of our designs yeah, so I went to go upload this design that I made a while back on previous episode and we'll cut all this out. So I took this design that we made in a previous episode it made me log in, by the way to try to put this in. Now I realize you can't do any of the shirts or clothes because it's on the pro plan, so to do that you have to pay $16 a month just to even see it.
Speaker 3I mean, yeah, if you know what works well and you're going to do it like, yeah, it would be worth it.
Evaluating the Pro Plan Value
Speaker 1Yeah, I think the other problem is. So I went through this. I'm like, oh, they're all pro. So, as you can see, like I'm clicking around, they all say pro. So you can't do any of the clothes, you can't do a lot of the stuff, and so I'm like, well, okay, let's try it on a free one. They have to have some sort of free. If there's some pro, let's figure out if we can add it to a free one. At least play around with it for a minute.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 1So I go back to the main page and I try to filter out the free ones. So at the top there's a filter. So I go to all the mock-ups and then at the top there's a filter and there's a free. They only have 15 free and so they have like a phone, a wallet, some posters, they have a shirt, but it's all folded, which I thought was interesting. That is weird I think, because most people probably want to use it for clothes, like I think that's probably a big aspect of theirs. So right anyway.
Speaker 1So I click this poster and, as you can see, it highlights the poster itself, and I tried to make it bigger or adjust it just to see. But I just drag my image in there and that's how it pops up at first. But you're like, oh, that's not quite, as. So you hit fill it, stretches, or it fills it, stretch, stretches it. I don't want either of those. So I go back to fit and I was like, all right, well, how do I change the background?
Speaker 1because I want to make sure that the background color is the same and if you go to color, it already pulled the color from the image I had, so you can just hit that and extended it, which I was like, oh, that's pretty cool yeah now.
Speaker 1That being said, this is like a square poster. I think the other ones are a little more intriguing, but if you you look at the free ones they offer you, none of them are the crazy intriguing ones. They're all kind of flat and no texture. Overall, I think it's a really cool website. I'll just say that I think it's really cool. I don't know, unless you're a digital designer that has to do it all the time if it's really.
Speaker 1I'd want to do this once to put, like my company or if I was doing this, like I would love to have that on a shirt, to see it on a shirt, right, right, if I could put that on, that'd be great. But I don't want to pay 16 bucks a month before you even know it is there like a trial or anything. So there's no trial that you can just try the free ones. But you can buy a specific picture that you can do as many mock-ups as you want with that one specific picture for like 6.99. So if you only wanted to choose two and like and have a female and a male and just have a shirt that you just kind of pop in and out and just to see how things look, that could probably work right, yeah, and it would still save you money because you only have to pay for it once.
Speaker 3But anyway, I think the actual uh utility of it is pretty cool, but I think you have to be really specific on the kind of digital design you do, because I think most people probably won't use this long term and so paying 16.99a month seems kind of steep actually for for for most people, yes, if you were a graphic designer and say you were designing a logo and you wanted to show what that logo would look like on a bunch of different things, yeah, 16 bucks like that's, that's like nothing compared to what you would spend time wise actually like finding the right images, creating displacement maps for each of those images, putting in your artwork, saving it, you know, yeah all those things.
Ideal Use Cases for Designers
Speaker 1That's a good point. So if you're making a logo for a company and when you send them a package of, hey, here's what it looks like instead of just on a piece of paper flat, it would be cool to be able to put it on a bunch of different mock things so that they can see it in real life and be like, oh yeah I really like that. That's a really good logo versus just by itself.
Speaker 3So that doesn't make sense if you're doing a lot of logo design if I were this company, I would create like the ability to do more images but put big old watermark over it exactly so that you can at least see that it works well. Yeah, but you can't export it unless you pay for it. If you're not going to offer a free trial, I think that would be the next best thing to do that's what I would.
Speaker 1That's what I assumed they were going to do, so you could play around with it and then if you wanted to export it, you know you can do it, but people obviously can screen grab and stuff, so having the watermark on would solve that issue.
Speaker 3Yeah, um, that's what I would probably get a lot more, a lot more business. Because what I would do in this case if I were a graphic designer looking to do something like this, I would go in and find out the exact same thing that you did when you tried this out and I'd be like I'll bet you there's another program that does this for free, or we'll just do a free trial.
Speaker 1I'm going to go look for that, even if I have to jump through a couple hurdles and it's not quite as smooth, I'll just do the free one.
Speaker 3Unless you're in a major time crunch and you truly believe this is going to work well and you're like I'm just going to pay $17 for this one month. If it doesn't work, I'm out. $17. Not a huge deal.
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