If you’re a photographer, one part of your workflow probably involves creating mockup images to showcase your work. Maybe you sell your photography as art prints—canvas art, framed wall pieces, or posters—or maybe you just want to show potential clients how your work looks in real-world environments. Either way, generating mockups one at a time in Photoshop is painfully slow and repetitive.
The typical process goes something like this: open the PSD mockup file, right-click to replace contents, locate your photo, drop it in, go to File > Export > Quick Export as PNG, choose a folder, type a filename. That’s one image done. Now do it again. And again. And again.
If you’re just creating a few mockups, that might be fine. But if you’re managing a larger portfolio—say dozens or even hundreds of photos—and generating multiple mockups for each one (showing different scenes, different frame colors, etc.), this manual process becomes a huge time sink. It could take an entire day or more just to get through your batch.
How to Fully Automate the Process
Fortunately, there’s a better way. In this guide, we’ll show you how to fully automate this workflow using a Photoshop plugin called Batch-Replace Smart Objects. It’s a powerful plugin that adds automation features directly into Photoshop, allowing you to generate entire folders of mockups with just a few clicks.
How It Works
If your mockup PSD is a simple scene with just one smart object layer, the plugin will automatically detect and use it. If your mockup is more complex and includes multiple smart objects, all you need to do is select the target smart object layer manually before running the operation.
The first step is selecting a Photoshop document to use. For this demo, we’re keeping things simple and just using a single PSD file from a folder of templates. Once that’s selected, we choose our input folder—this is the folder that contains all your photography images.
Handling Different Aspect Ratios
There’s an optional setting called “Stretch images to fit smart objects.” This is important if your photos have varying aspect ratios. For example, in our folder, most images are 2×3, but we also have some 3×4 and 4×5 images. If we drop a 4×5 photo into a 2×3 template without resizing, it looks wrong. The image doesn’t fit the mockup correctly, and the result looks sloppy.
That’s where the “Stretch to fit” option comes in. When enabled, the plugin will automatically resize each image so it fits the smart object perfectly, even if the original aspect ratio is off. In our case, we’re leaving this checked since there’s a mix of sizes. If you’re sure all your photos are the same size, you can leave it unchecked for slightly faster performance.
Selecting Output and File Format
Next, we select the output folder—the destination where all the final mockup images will be saved.
You also get to choose the file format: JPEG or PNG. If your mockup design includes transparency (say a floating canvas or a transparent background), go with PNG to preserve the alpha channel. Otherwise, JPEG is a solid choice, especially for lighter file sizes.
You can even adjust the save quality:
- High setting: Better-looking images, larger file sizes
- Low setting: Smaller, faster-loading files, but slightly reduced quality
Our recommendation? Just test a few different quality levels and find what works best for your specific workflow. For this demo, we’re going with a mid-range setting (level six), which balances quality and performance.
Ready to Run
With everything configured—PSD selected, input and output folders set, format and quality dialed in—we’re ready to run the operation and let the plugin take over.
From Setup to Automated Mockup Image Creation
Once everything was configured, we clicked “Run This Now” and the plugin went to work—cranking out mockup images in the background automatically. For each image in the input folder, it opened the image, resized it to fit the mockup’s smart object, and exported the result to our output folder. Completely hands-free.
We popped over to the output folder and sure enough, all the mockups had been created and saved, just like that. The entire operation finished without us having to do anything manually. It even handled the images with non-standard dimensions—like the 3x4s and 4x5s. Those were resized on the fly to fit the smart object cleanly, and they came out looking great.
Of course, you don’t want to go too extreme with the resizing. If you tried to drop in an image with an aspect ratio like 1×2 or something wildly different, it would likely look squashed or distorted. But for most standard photography dimensions, it works extremely well. Even the resized examples in our test looked good and natural.
Running Folder-Based Mockup Operations
Next, we switched modes to try out one of the plugin’s most powerful features: folder-based operations. Instead of selecting just one PSD file to work with, you can point the plugin to an entire folder of mockup templates. So if you’re creating multiple room mockups, frame variants, or alternate product scenes, this is a massive time saver.
We selected a folder that contained nine mockup templates, and then picked our input folder of photography images. For this run, we knew all the images were already perfectly sized, so we left the “Stretch to fit” option unchecked. That way, the plugin could run as fast as possible.
From there, we hit “Run This Now”, and the plugin absolutely tore through the mockups. It started with the first PSD file, applied each photograph from the input folder, exported the results, and then moved on to the next PSD template. It repeated this cycle for each template in the folder—room mockups, framed canvases, everything.
Performance-Optimized Automation
As the Batch-Replace Smart Objects plugin worked, Photoshop automatically closed each PSD once the batch was complete. That’s a small but powerful feature—especially useful if you’re working with dozens of PSDs or particularly large files. Instead of loading all of them at once and eating up memory, it closes them out one by one, keeping Photoshop running smoothly and preventing crashes.
After a minute or so, the operation finished and we opened up the results. In total, it created 90 mockup images across all the templates. And it grouped them by filename—each one starting with the name of the artwork, followed by the name of the mockup scene. That structure makes it super easy to organize your assets. You can drag and drop images directly into an online store, attach them in an email, or move them to the next step in your client workflow with zero confusion.
The Bottom Line
In the time it would take you to manually create just one mockup, this plugin can generate 30, 40, even 50 mockups in the background. It’s an absolutely massive time saver, especially for photographers managing large collections or selling artwork in multiple formats. The speed and convenience of automating this process truly can’t be overstated.
Save Time with Presets and Workflows
Another great feature of this plugin is the ability to save operations to run later. You don’t have to go through the full setup each time—if you have a standardized workflow where you always use the same PSD mockup templates, input folder for your photography, and output destination, you can just save that configuration.
For example, you can name your operation “Create Canvas Art Mockups” and click save. The plugin stores all of your current settings—PSD path, input folder, output folder, export format, save quality, and more. The next time you want to run the same setup, you just load that saved operation and click “Run.” No need to reselect anything.
Multi-Step Workflows
Even better, you can take it a step further by setting up multi-step workflows. A workflow chains together multiple saved operations and runs them in order. This is especially useful if you’re creating mockups for different clients or product categories, and each has its own templates, artwork, and output needs.
Let’s say you’re a freelance photographer working with several clients. You could build a workflow called “Make All Client Mockups.”
- Step one uses a specific folder of PSD templates for client #1, along with their input folder and a designated export folder.
- Step two is for client #2, using different templates, a new batch of photographs, and an alternate export location. Maybe this client prefers PNG format and higher quality settings—no problem.
Once all the steps are added, you can run the entire workflow with one click. The plugin handles it start to finish—completing each step and moving automatically to the next. Whether it’s two steps or ten, the process is fully hands-free.
All your saved workflows live under the Workflows tab. Each one displays the list of steps and settings it will execute. Just click the button to kick off the full chain of mockup generation.
Smart Handling of Transparency
Before we wrap up, here’s one more common question: How does this plugin handle transparency?
If you’re working with mockups that require transparent backgrounds—for example, mockups with floating canvas shadows or isolated objects—just be sure to export in PNG format. The plugin will automatically preserve the alpha channel. No solid backgrounds will be added, and your exported mockups will retain full transparency just as intended.
Final Thoughts
All in all, this plugin is a serious productivity boost for anyone creating mockups in Photoshop. It eliminates hours of tedious, repetitive work and gives you a simple, repeatable system you can run again and again. Whether you’re generating ten mockups or a thousand, the time savings are substantial—and the results stay consistently high-quality.
You can find the plugin—Batch-Replace Smart Objects—on the official Adobe Exchange. If you’re tired of doing the same Photoshop work over and over, give it a try. A few simple clicks and you’re done.
Hope this guide was helpful! If it saved you time or helped improve your workflow, feel free to post a comment to let the world know. Thanks for reading!
