If you regularly create custom mockup images in Photoshop, you know how repetitive and time-consuming it can be. The standard workflow usually involves opening up your mockup template, manually replacing the contents of a smart object, exporting the image, naming the file, and repeating this same process over and over. Even if you try to speed it up by copying your artwork into the smart object and flattening it, it’s still a grind when you have to do this for dozens or hundreds of images.
This kind of manual process might be fine if you’re only doing a few mockups. But when you’re dealing with different room setups, product variants, or large batches of artwork, it quickly becomes a huge time sink. That’s where the Batch-Replace Smart Objects plugin comes in. This Photoshop plugin automates the entire mockup creation process, saving you hours of tedious work.
How the Plugin Works
Using the plugin is straightforward. At the top of the interface, you set up your operation. You can choose to work with either a single Photoshop document or a whole folder of PSD templates. To keep things simple, let’s start with a single mockup template. After selecting your PSD file, you choose your input folder, which contains the artwork images you want to insert into the mockup.
Stretch to Fit Option
There’s also an option to stretch images to fit the smart object. This is especially useful if your input images have varying dimensions or aspect ratios. Leaving this option enabled ensures your mockups always look clean and properly aligned, regardless of image inconsistencies.
Exporting Your Final Mockups
Next, you choose your output folder—where the final mockup images will be saved. You can pick between JPEG or PNG as your export format. If you’re going with JPEG, you also have control over the compression level. Higher quality means larger file sizes, while lower quality saves space at the cost of visual fidelity. For the first run, setting it somewhere in the middle is usually a safe bet, and you can tweak it based on what works best for your needs.
Click Run and Let It Work
Once everything’s configured, you just click the “Run” button. The plugin takes over from there—opening, resizing, and inserting each image into the smart object, exporting the result, and repeating the process for every image in your folder. It’s fast, hands-off, and incredibly efficient.
Massive Time Savings
In one test run, the plugin generated 75 mockup images in a single go. Comparing that to the old manual process, the time savings are massive. If mockup generation is a regular part of your workflow, this plugin is an absolute game changer.
Automating Multiple Mockup Templates with Folder Mode
In some cases, your mockup workflow might involve more than just one Photoshop template. Maybe you have multiple variants—different frame colors, multiple room settings, or alternate angles of the same product. If that sounds like your setup, the Batch-Replace Smart Objects plugin can handle that too—easily.
To switch from a single-template workflow to a multi-template one, just toggle the plugin into “folder mode.” Instead of selecting just one PSD file, you point it to a folder containing all your mockup templates. The plugin will then iterate through each PSD file in the folder, applying your artwork images to every single one, automatically generating mockups along the way.
How Folder Mode Works
You start by selecting your folder of PSD mockup files, then your folder of input images—just like before. In this example, we’re going to uncheck the “stretch to fit” option because we already know the artwork images are sized correctly. Disabling that can speed things up a bit. Finally, select your output folder, and you’re ready to go.
Click “Run this now” and the plugin gets to work. It starts with the first PSD file, generates all the mockups for that one, exports them, then closes the file to free up memory. It then moves on to the next PSD, and repeats the process for each file in the folder.
Smart Resource Management
That’s a key performance feature. Mockup PSDs can be hefty—loaded with high-res textures, adjustment layers, and complex smart object stacks. Trying to open and keep 20 or 30 of those files open at once? That’ll choke your RAM, slow down Photoshop, and could even crash your system. This plugin avoids that completely by opening and closing each PSD one at a time, preserving system resources and keeping the process smooth and stable.
675 Mockups, Zero Hassle
In a recent test run, the plugin generated 675 mockup images. That’s 675 images named, exported, and organized—all on autopilot. It even names the files in a smart way, grouping them by artwork name. That makes the upload process way faster later on, especially if you’re listing products in an online store. You can just grab the grouped sets and go, instead of wasting time hunting for the right files.
Manually doing that many mockups would’ve taken the better part of a full day—opening each file, replacing the image, making sure it’s sized right, exporting, naming, and repeating that process hundreds of times. With this plugin, you just set up the inputs, click a few buttons, and let it run. It’s a massive time-saver and one of the easiest ways to speed up your print-on-demand or eCommerce image creation workflow.
Save Time with Reusable Operations and Workflows
Another powerful feature of the Batch-Replace Smart Objects plugin is the ability to save your operations—either as single-step automations or as full, multi-step workflows. This can be a huge time-saver if you have a consistent setup you use regularly.
Let’s say you always use the same mockup file, drop your artwork into the same folder, and export mockups to the same destination. Rather than manually selecting everything each time, you can save this setup as a named operation. You define your template, input folder, output folder, and quality settings, then click “Save.” The next time you need to run that operation, it’s just one click away—no need to reconfigure anything. This is perfect for standardized workflows where the files and folders don’t change.
To illustrate how the plugin handles different image sizes, a few incorrectly-sized images were included in one run. As expected, the plugin resized them to fit the mockup smart object layer, although the visuals were stretched. This highlights the benefit of enabling the “stretch to fit” option, which ensures that all artwork is scaled correctly to avoid distortions—especially when working with images of varying dimensions.
Create Multi-Step Workflows
Beyond single-step operations, the plugin also lets you create entire workflows with multiple steps. For example, let’s say you want to generate mockups using three different templates—black frame, brown frame, and white frame. You can define each one as a step in the workflow. Set the input folder, output location, image format, and other settings, then add each step one by one. When you click “Run,” the plugin will execute all steps in sequence—generating every mockup variation without any manual input in between.
Support for Multiple Clients and Projects
The plugin doesn’t stop there. You can build workflows that use entire folders of PSD mockup files instead of just individual templates. This is incredibly useful for professionals handling multiple clients or large-scale product lines. Imagine you’re a designer creating mockups for multiple clients. Each client might have different mockup styles, artwork themes, and file preferences.
With this setup, you can create a workflow like “Make All Client Mockups.” Step one might involve Client One’s PSD folder, artwork folder, and export destination. Step two might use Client Two’s completely separate PSDs, artwork, and export settings. You can even change the output format and quality per step—using JPEGs for one client and high-res PNGs for another.
One Click to Automate Everything
Once the workflow is built, you just click a single button—and the plugin will automatically run through every step, handling all the file processing, image replacements, and exports with zero manual effort.
This kind of automation is a game changer for anyone dealing with mockup generation at scale. Whether you’re an eCommerce seller, print-on-demand designer, or creative agency juggling multiple brands, this plugin turns a tedious manual grind into a fast, efficient, one-click process.
