Sealed Bags 2.0 — Stickers!

Sealed Bags 1.0 was released around December 2019. There was nothing like them in the creative field. People liked them, and I was happy with it.

But I always felt they lack something crucial. That something was the capability to add stuff on top of them, like stickers. It's pretty common to find bags like these with stickers glued on them.

Having that feature would be AWESOME.

I knew this from the very beginning. Problem is I was limited by Photoshop. There was no way to do it. I was already pushing Photoshop to its limits. So I released the bags we all know and moved on to new projects.

Recently, they dropped this bomb. 3D mockups are going to be completely useless any time soon.

I really love these bags. I don't want to lose them, and I don't want the people who got them to lose them either. Especially the latter made me very, very upset.

And what's the best we can do when we get upset?

We make a change.

We use it as inspirational fuel to fix something. To improve something. Something worth pursuing.

After all, what's the worst it could happen? Just a couple of weeks "wasted". But what if we win, though?

And that's what happened.

I highly recommend reading the jorney that brought us here.

The result? ZMOK and Sealed Bags 2.0

3D lives on

The bags don't rely on Photoshop's 3D features anymore.

ZMOK is the new engine that drives these new bags. It's faster, better, and most importantly: it just works.

The only difference from the previous workflow is that now you need to install ZMOK and open the .ZMOK file that comes with the mockups prior to work with them in Photoshop. From there, the process is exactly the same as any other mockup out there.

Now we get to enjoy these bags again. What else?

Glad you asked 🤗. Keep reading!

Finally: Stickers

The groundbreaking new feature. Just look.

We can even "cheat" a bit and place some dust textures on the same stickers smart object, and...

ZMOK makes it possible. It supports alpha rendering. Photoshop 3D doesn't. You can read more about it here.

This feature by itself makes the bags much more powerful and fun to use 🚀!

Increased quality

Resolution has been increased by 1.5x. It went from 3800px to 5700px wide.

In simple terms, now you get more details and zoom capabilities. This wasn't possible in the previous Photoshop 3D version. At that resolution, it became too slow to handle properly.

ZMOK is more efficient, thus we're able to bump the quality and even reduce rendering times.

Better layer scheme.

Necessary changes to make the stickers feature work.

The structure should also be clearer. Small changes to the color correction values as well.

More changes

HUE correction

Some colors were a bit off compared to the source artwork. I don't exactly know why that happens. I spent some time getting the right HUE values across the color spectrum to match the artwork and final mockup render.

Just a minor change. You may need a good screen to see the changes. Still, a step towards a more color accurate mockup.

Sticker thickness effect

A subtle effect to give the illusion of "thickness" to the stickers, achieving a more realistic result in some cases. Barely noticeable, but helpful.

It is disabled by default. You can find it as Drop Shadow within the render layer, as shown in the screenshot below.

If you plan to use textures like the dirt example shown earlier, it would be best to keep it disabled.

New guide

Given all the changes, it was necessary to rework the whole guide. It remains simple and straightforward.

Random white pixels

A couple of white pixels were found in some bags. They should not be there anymore.

I have the first version. Will I receive the update?

OF COURSE!

By the time I post this, you should have received an email ✉️ with a link to the new bags.

And that's it. Thank you for reading and have a great day 🌈