Adobe Illustrator’s new tool makes hi-fi product mock-ups as easy as drag and drop

One written tutorial published by Adobe about making mock-up images of products in Photoshop is more than 900 words long. A new update to Adobe Illustrator now makes the task as easy as drag and drop.

It’s just one of the updates to Photoshop and Illustrator that Adobe announced recently. Illustrator’s Mockup tool, now available in beta, gives designers the ability to place and move logos and graphics onto images of products like cans or product packaging. The tool automatically detects details of a mock-up product image, like the the lip of a can or the wrinkles on a shirt, then adapts the logo or graphics accordingly.

Other recent Adobe updates use artificial intelligence. Illustrator users can fill shapes with editable vector designs using Generative Shape Fill, which runs on Adobe’s generative AI engine Firefly. Adobe also improved Text to Pattern, which generates patterns with AI based on text prompts.

“The really cool use cases for these is if you are a packaging designer and you want to add really cool patterns to your packaging designs, or backgrounds to typical graphic design projects, wallpaper designs,” says Adobe designer Paul Trani. “It just generates a really cool pattern based off of what I’ve asked it to do.”

Many of the updates are inspired by user feedback, like the new Illustrator Dimension tool, which plots precise measurements and can be used by professionals from architects to packaging designers. Illustrator’s Retype tool turns static images of text fully editable by searching Adobe’s library of more than 22,000 fonts and finding either an exact match or the closest equivalents.

“These are features that really come back to our ethos,” Deepa Subramaniam, Adobe’s VP of product marketing for Creative Cloud, tells Fast Company. “Why we do what we do every day is really around accelerating creative workflows and helping creatives be more creative within the applications that they use every single day, like Illustrator and Photoshop.”

It certainly seems like the Mockup tool will speed the rendering process along, considering it no longer requires a 900-word how-to guide. Detailed patterns can be as simple as writing a text prompt.