Sam McCraw
Printful is a popular platform used by many print on demand sellers. They offer a great range of products that you can sell, and they have their own mockup generator that allows you to easily create simple mockups for each product.
In this article, we’re going to take you through the step by step process of creating mockups using Printful’s mockup generator so you can create some awesome promotional images for your print on demand products.
Let’s get started.
How to create mockups with Printful’s mockup generator:
More sections:
Before we dive into the steps, if you’re looking for unlimited downloads of hundreds of high quality mockups that are perfect for print on demand sellers using Printful then you might be interested in using Placeit’s mockup generator.
We’d recommend Placeit as they have such a huge volume and variety of templates, including many for common print on demand products and brands such as Bella+Canvas.
You can get 15% of your Placeit subscription by clicking the button below:
Step 1: Choose your product
Before you can start creating mockups with Printful’s mockup generator you’ll need to sign for a Printful account. It’s completely free to do and is a very quick process.
Once you’re signed up and logged in to your Printful account, navigate to the product catalog and choose a product that you’d like to create a mockup for. For example, we chose the Bella+Canvas Unisex Pullover Hoodie:
All you need to do next is scroll down the page and click the ‘Create product template’ button which will take you to the design editor:
Step 2: Upload your design
In the design editor you can choose where you want to place the design on your chosen product, for example on our hoodie we could choose to have the design on the left chest, center chest, large center, and several other options (we chose ‘Large center’):
Note: Check out this article if you need some inspiration for print on demand designs.
You’ll then need to upload a design that you want see in your mockup images, or you can use text elements, clipart, or ‘Quick designs’ as the design featured in your mockup:
If you want mockups of your chosen product in different colors you’ll have to select these before you continue to the next step. You can see the color options on the left side of the design editor in the ‘Product’ tab:
Once you’re happy with your design and color settings you can now click the ‘Continue’ button, this will take you to a review page. From here you simply need to click ‘Save product template’:
Note: If you’ve chosen a product where embroidery is an option, and you have embroidery selected (rather than DTG) then you’ll have a button that says ‘Calculate price’ instead of continue.
Simply click on this, and then from there it’s the same steps.
Step 3: Go to your product templates
Navigate to the ‘Product templates’ tab in your Printful dashboard.
From here you need to hover over the new product that you just added so you can the three dots appear over the product thumbnail.
Click on the dots and then select ‘Download mockups’:
The next step is to choose one of the options Basic mockups or Custom mockups. We’ll take you through both options in Step 4:
Step 4: Choose your mockup option
There are two options when it comes to creating mockups on Printful.
You can either choose the basic options, which gives you set selection of mockups for your chosen product o the custom mockup option which allows you to create custom mockups in Printful’s mockup editor.
We take you through both options below.
Step 4 – Option 1 (Basic)
If you chose the basic option you’ll be taken to a screen like the one below (you’ll have different mockup options depending the product you selected):
From here you simply need to select the mockup images that you want to download by clicking the checkbox for your chosen mockups:
If you scroll down the page, you’ll see all the mockups that you’ve selected. Usually, there will be a version for all the color options you chose previously:
The last step is to choose the format in which you want to download the mockups in (either JPG or PNG), and then all that’s left is to click the ‘Generate mockups’ button which start the download.
You’ll get a zip file with all the mockups if you selected multiple images, or you’ll get a JPG or PNG image if you only chose to download one image:
Step 4 – Option 2 (Custom)
When you navigate to the custom mockup area, you’ll arrive on a screen similar to this (it will have different mockups based on the product you chose and colors, etc.).
If you chose multiple color options for your product, these will also appear below the main panel in the mockup generator:
On the left side of the mockup generator you have several options including the mockup style in the layers tab. This let’s you choose the product image that’s used in your custom mockup:
You have the option to add pre-made backgrounds to your mockup via the ‘Scenes’ tab. These are made of background images, props such as plants, shoes, and also shapes and gradients.
They’re also sorted into categories to make it easier to find the right one for you e.g. abstract, blooming nature, colorful, etc.:
If you’ve created any custom scenes and saved them, you’ll see them in the ‘My scenes’ section of the ‘Scenes’ tab:
You can build your own scenes by selecting items from the ‘Props’ tab, choosing a background option from the ‘Fill’ tab, and adding additional elements via the ‘Clipart’ and ‘Text’ tabs.
You can also upload your own design elements and grab them via the ‘Uploads’ tab too:
There are different customization options for each design element. You can go to the layers tab, select a layer, and the customization options for that element will appear above the mockup image.
For example, you can see the customization options for the text layer in the image below:
Once you’re happy with your mockup scene you click the ‘Continue’ button at the bottom right of the editor. This will take to a summary page where you can see a final preview of your mockups.
You can click ‘Edit mockup’ to go back to the mockup editor, and you can also save your mockup design as a scene to be used in future custom mockups too by clicking ‘Save mockup as scene’:
The last step is to choose the product colors that you want to download, and the format that you want for your mockup images (JPG or PNG). Once that’s done you can click the ‘Generate mockups’ button to download your mockup designs.
You’ll download a zip file if you have selected multiple images or just a JPG or PNG image if you only select one:
Bonus step: Get even more mockup options
If you’re looking for more apparel mockups for your print on demand products, you should definitely checkout Placeit’s library. Here are some of the top categories for mockups of products that you’ll find on Printful:
- Bella+Canvas 3001 – over 300 templates
- Bella+Canvas 6681 – over 100 templates
- Bella+Canvas 3005 – over 20 templates
- Gildan 5000 – over 50 templates
- Gildan 18000 – over 20 templates
There’s many more apparel mockups on the site, as well as incredible mockup templates for other products in Printful’s inventory such as mugs, tumblers, phone cases, art prints, pillows, and so much more.
Get 15% of your Placeit subscription by clicking the button below:
Alternative mockup generators
There are quite a few alternative mockup generators that you can use if you don’t find what you’re after on Prinful’s mockup tool.
The best alternatives at the moment are probably Placeit and Smart Mockups, here’s a list of the best alternatives:
- Placeit
- Smart Mockups
- Media Modifier
- Artboard Studio
- Vexels
- Renderforest
- Mockit
- Mockup Mark
- Printify’s mockup generator
FAQs
Answers to some commonly asked questions regarding Printful’s mockup generator:
Does Printful have a mockup generator?
Yes, Printful has a mockup generator that allows you to create a range of mockups for any product you choose from Printful’s inventory.
Their mockup generator is very easy to use, and the best part is that it is 100% free.
There are some superior mockup generators such as Placeit’s which can be used by print on demand sellers in conjunction with the free templates from Printful to create a library of fantastic mockup images to promote your products and designs.
How do I create a mockup in Printful?
Here are the steps to create mockups on Printful:
- Sign up for a free Printful account
- Login to your account
- Choose a product from Printful’s inventory
- Upload your design to that product listing draft and save it
- Go to your product templates
- Choose your mockup option
- Choose/create your custom mockups and download them
Go back and read this guide if you need more information on how to use Printful’s mockup generator.
Are Printful mockups free to use?
Yes, Printful is 100% free to sign up for, and at the moment it is 100% free to create mockups via their mockup generator.
You can use these mockups for free when promoting your products too.
How do I get more mockups from Printful?
You can get more mockups from Printful by using their custom mockup generator to create more variations of your mockups.
You can also download all the available mockup options in the basic mockups section for a particular product – go back to step 4 of this guide for more details.
You can also get even more mockups from alternative mockup generators, in particular we would recommend Placeit and Smart Mockups as they have so many great templates that print on demand sellers can utilize.
Related articles & resources
- Best mockup websites for Etsy sellers
- Best mockup websites
- How to make a mockup without Photoshop
- How to create images of models wearing your designs
- How to create mockups in Canva
- T-shirt mockup generators
- Bella+Canvas mockup generators
- Printify mockup generator
- More mockup resources and templates
- Placeit mockups
- How to use Placeit with Printify & Printful
Wrapping things up
So, there you have it, that’s how you can quickly and easily create high-quality mockups using Printful’s mockup generator.
Tools like Printful’s and other online mockup generators make the process of creating product mockups for your print on demand store ridiculously easy.
Enjoy creating, and if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, leave a comment below!
