As a blogger and online marketer, I’m always so excited to see all of the new advancements and tools in the industry. This is mainly because I’ve been in this game for nearly 20 years now and I was designing my sites with hand coded HTML back in the day, and know the time and frustrations it takes to create something amazing. What I love to see nowadays, is how so many different services and solutions are coming out to make what used to be a complicated and thorough process, now dead simple easy.
For example… I love fancy image and high quality graphics — but I would never call myself a graphics designer. Sure, I could create some nice images and ad creative if I wanted to, but it wouldn’t be worth the amount of time it would take for me to figure it out… and the quality wouldn’t be there either.
PlaceIt.net is one such company that is revolutionizing the way we create images, ad creative and mock up designs.
How cool would it be to create an image of a bunch of kids excited to play Nintendo on their old TV, but actually be accessing your web site instead? Yea, crazy right?… “BOOM” — a few clicks of a button and your dream is now a reality!
Joking aside, Placeit.net is dead simple easy to use and creates extremely high quality images, while also offering some amazing customization features in the process — all of which we are going to be taking a look at in this article.
What Is Placeit and Why Are People Using It?
Placeit is a web app tool that allows you to generate fancy mockups and high quality product images of your apps being used in realistic environments. Whether you have an app to promote or not, the tool can be used for just about any type of marketing, branding or fun promotions — remember what I did with the Nintendo and my blog design?
Once you access the Placeit.net web site, you will see there is a wide range of fast creation mock-up tools, design concepts and variations for you to choose from. The platform is also currently built to support screenshots of some Microsoft, iOS, and Android products. You can see the many stage types and featured devices below.
Not only is Placeit extremely easy to use, it’s also free to create images and videos right from their site. Depending on the images you would like to use, you can buy credits for high quality photos through their site or use them to upload images of your own to import through their site. To create a custom image or screenshot of your own, it only take a few seconds of your time. It’s literally a matter of choosing the image, background and uploading your custom image or video.
The main focus and concept behind Placeit, it to help app developers promote their apps without the hassle of hiring a graphics or video designer. The video below will humorously walk you through the process of how to create a demo video for your app in just a few minutes time.
Once you walk through the process and are happy with your image or video, you can then use your purchased credit to download the files — which also come in a wide range of quality and sizes.
How to Easily Create Mockup Images with Placeit
The process of creating high quality mockup images and videos through Placeit is quite easy, and most people will be able to figure it out just by accessing their site. However, in keeping with the theme for this review, I will also walk you through the short process as well.
When you visit the Placeit homepage, you will come across a wide range of images you can select, or you can sort through the images based on their device or type through the left side menu. Once you find an image you like, click on it and it will proceed you through the process.
With your selected image now chose, it’s time for you to upload a screenshot of your app or web site screenshot from your computer. The image you selected will show you the size of the image that should be uploaded. If you can’t resize the image on your end before uploading, you can always do this through their crop editor after uploading to their site. The option is also there to grab a screenshot from a url.
After the image is uploaded and looks good, you will then see it inside the picture you originally selected. The finalized image can be downloaded and used without the watermark and for unlimited use. You also have the option to download in several different sizes and formats.
To create app demo videos, the process is just as simple.
Again you would head to the Placeit homepage and instead of searching for an “image”, this time you would sort for a “video” and select the one that fits your needs.
Once you find a video that you like, you can then click on the “Record Your Screen” option to create and import your own video. You can also have PlaceIt create a site for you based off of what’s currently on your site.
Using this exact concept, I was able to create the short video below in no time at all.
When happy with your finished product, you can purchase a high quality version without the PlaceIt watermark on it.
Placeit Pricing & Options
If you were going to try and create your own images and videos like the ones above, it would likely take you quite a while to accomplish this. If you were to go the outsourced agency or designer route, it would also cost you a pretty penny.
Placeit has a solution in place that not only makes it easy for you to create on your own, but also so you get to see the finished work before having to pay anything for it.
There are several models for pricing on their site, such as single purchase pricing, combo packages and purchasing credits on a monthly subscription basis. For one time purchases, high quality images are $ 8, and super high are $ 28. Normal sized videos are $ 99 to download.
Download packs allow you to get a bulk discount when you purchase them all at one time, and then these credits will sit in your account until you have the need to use them. Download packs are currently only for images.
If you are going to create a lot of images and videos for your app or brand outreach, a subscription might be your best bet. This would also be a great solution for any designer or agency businesses out there that might want to cater these same needs to their existing clients. As you can see, these packages are heavily discounted versus buying a one time image use.
To see all of the pricing options in full detail, be sure to click here and click on “Save with Subscriptions.”
Placeit – Create Awesome Mockup Designs and Videos
As you can tell from the examples laid out in this post, Placeit is a pretty cool tool and it can work wonders for anyone that has an app and just waiting to share it with the rest of the work. Even for the short video I made where I just plugged in my URL and they came up with a video of their own, it was still pretty cool to see it all in action.
Whether you have an app, an online business to promote or just want to create a fun image like I did at the beginning of the post, head over to http://placeit.net and see what they have to offer.
The post How to Create iPhone Mockups and App Demo Videos with Placeit appeared first on Zac Johnson.