How to Create a Video Screen Mockup in Photoshop

Do you want your portfolio to stand out from the crowd? Then use a video mockup to showcase your work instead. This is how you can create one.

Mockups are a great way to show your work quickly and in an ideal setting. While most people use image mockups, a video mockup will grab attention and keep people engaged in your work. Adding a video to a screen is a cool way to show your work and not very difficult to do either.

What Is a Video Screen Mockup?

A mockup is a digital way to prototype a design or apply a design to its real-time product without producing it. The reasons for this are many, but one main reason for creating a mockup is to make your designs, illustrations, or anything you want to show off look more realistic. It helps your audience visualize how the piece will look at the end.

Instead of the extra time, money, and effort it would take to produce an actual product, you can create a digital mockup featuring your art, design, website, etc.

Now, an animated screen mockup is a very similar concept, but with a mockup on a screen, like a phone or a computer. And instead of an image, the mockup will show a moving design or video.

These moving designs can be anything from a video to a UX/UI design prototype or a screen recording.

Why Should You Use an Animated Screen Mockup?

One of the best reasons for creating an animated screen mockup is to show off a website. It’s a great way to show off a website you’ve designed in your portfolio.

Using a mockup gives a bit more creativity in your portfolio than simple screenshots of your website. It’s a great way to diversify how your mockups can look.

If you want to display a video you’ve created, this can also be a creative way to show it instead of just embedding the video from YouTube etc. Overall, an animated screen mockup is a fun way to display your work.

How to Create an Animated Screen Mockup in Photoshop

While most people know Photoshop as an image editing tool, you can also use it to create animations and videos. So, here are the steps to creating a video mockup using Photoshop.

What Kind of Video Should You Use?

There are lots of options for your animated screen mockup. A smaller video file will work best. While you can use this technique to display real video footage, the size will make it harder to render in Photoshop.

For that reason, we’ll be creating a mockup scrolling a webpage. Using a shorter video with no other design aspects will render quicker and yield a high-quality result.

Use a screen recorder to create a video of your screen. This can be done on a mobile or desktop, depending on what you want your mockup to be on. We’ll be using Quicktime Player on Mac and the New Screen Recording option, but there are plenty of other Mac options. If you have an iPhone, you can see how to screen record on an iPhone. You don’t need any audio in this recording.

For our video, we recorded the Makeuseof.com website, showing a range of articles about graphic design. You can screen record whatever makes sense for you. Keep a steady scroll and ensure it is neither too fast nor too slow.

Once your short recording is complete, save it as an MP4 and put it in an easy-to-access folder.

What Kind of Photo Should You Use?

For the best results in this mockup, you should use a photo that shows an unobstructed screen. This can be a mobile screen, computer, or even a TV screen. Although your image can show some perspective, it is best if the screen is mostly facing you straight on.

It is possible to use an obstructed screen or an image with a heavy perspective for a more complicated mockup, but we’ll just keep it simple today.

You can take your own photo or download one from a royalty-free site, such as Unsplash. We won’t be using a premade PSD mockup for this tutorial, so you won’t need the hassle of trying to find one.

How to Make the Video Mockup

Open your image in Photoshop.

If you downloaded the image from a royalty-free site or took it with a high-quality camera, the size may be pretty big. You can bring the image size down.

Click Image > Image Size. The final dimensions are up to you, but we recommend a width of around 1200. Keep the image constraints in proportion when changing the size. Click OK.

Now to create the space where the video will sit. Find the dimensions of your original video; if you screen recorded from a phone, find the phone’s screen dimensions, and if you screen recorded a website, you could use a standard 1680 x 1050, unless you know the exact dimensions.

Using the Rectangle tool (U), click on your canvas. This will bring a popup that you can specify the dimensions in. Put in the width and height of your screen recording and click OK. Remove the stroke and pick a fill color of black or dark gray.

On the rectangle’s layer, right-click and go to Convert to Smart Object. Now you can transform the rectangle to fit perfectly into the screen. This means that any image placed on the smart object will follow the same shape transformation.

To transform your rectangle, use the Transform tool. You can find this by going to Edit > Free Transform or by hitting cmd + T (Mac) or ctrl + T (Windows).

The Transform tool will only change the size of the rectangle. Change the size to as similar to the screen as you can. Then use the Distort feature.

Again, go to the Edit menu, then Transform > Distort. This will allow you to drag and stretch the corners to meet perfectly with your screen. This works great if your image has some added perspective to it. Double-click off the rectangle once you’ve lined up all your corners and edges. If the edges are not correctly lined up, use the Transform tool and Distort option again until they are.

You can insert your video into your correctly sized and shaped smart object. Click Window > Timeline to open the animation timeline. Ensure it is on the video timeline rather than frame animation.

Double-click on the smart object in the layers panel by clicking the icon with a paper and square on the thumbnail for your smart object. This opens in a new window.

Drag your video to the smart object window. Your video should be the same size as your rectangle. If the dimensions are off, you can fix it easily: drag the corners until they fit the whole window.

If you need to crop any edges off, you can do that. Whatever you can see is what will be shown in the final mockup. Once you’re happy, double-click to confirm the size and placement.

You’ll now see two timeline layers on the video timeline: one for the rectangle and one for the new video. Drag the length of the rectangle’s timeline to match the length of the video. This ensures the video will be seen for its duration.

Click the play button to check your video. It may take a while to load and therefore play slower than the actual timing.

To make your video screen look more realistic, change the blend mode of the video layer. You can also turn the opacity down on the video layer). Play around with different blending settings until you’re happy. If you want to leave it without this step, that’s fine too. It will give a clearer view of the screen.

Now, to save the video to your mockup, just save the smart object window. You can do this by going to File > Save or hitting cmd + S (Mac) or ctrl + S (Windows). Once saved, exit out of the smart object window.

You’ll return to the mockup window. You’ll see your video in the place of the screen.

To save your mockup, go to File > Export > Render Video… Here, you can change the size of the final mockup. Changing the size will help with loading and overall file size, too. Once you’re happy with your settings, click Render.

This will result in a final MP4 video file with your completed video mockup.

Take Your Mockups Further with a Video Screen Mockup

By using video in your screen mockups, you’ll be able to share more work and engage more people. This dynamic mockup style created in Photoshop is easy to make and has excellent results.

While you can use this technique for a static mockup using just an image, by using video, you are learning a new skill and encouraging people to engage with your work for longer. A video mockup is rare to see, and the surprise will grab the attention of anyone looking.