Using The Room Sets – Step By Step Instructions

Room sets are a great way to show a client how wall art might look. They will significantly increase your sales value and are also a great way to show your work on social media and your website.

You can find room sets to download in the Store.

If you prefer to watch a video of these steps, a step-by-step guide can be found here.

Instructions for using a room set in Photoshop

When you open the PSD file, you will see something like this:

When you first open the file, each frame has an image with a number – these will be removed when you put in your own photos, but it makes the process easier if there is a placeholder to start with.

If you look in the layers window, you will see a number of layers (you may need to expand the group “Three Frames” to see all of the layers):

“Background” Layer – The wall, sofa and frame rims and mounts. This is the background layer for everything.
“Frame Images” Group – this group contains the frames themselves – this is the layer you’ll swap your own images into.
“Reflections” Layer – this layer contains the window and light reflections on the wall art (acrylics and glass-fronted frames have clear, sharp reflections over the top of your images – this gives an accurate representation of what the frames will look like in real life
If the Room Set is colour-adjustable, you will also find a “Colour Adjustments” group – this has various adjustment layers depending on what can be changed in that particular Room Set

How To Insert Your Own Pictures, Step By Step

To use the Room Set with your own picture, first expand the group ‘Frame Images” (note the name my vary depending on which room set you are using).

You should now see each of the frame layers:

Notice that these are SMART OBJECTS – it just means they have a PSD within a PSD. To access the contents, just double-click on the layer icon:

You’ll enter the embedded Photoshop object (it will look just like a regular file – it will have a .PSB extension but it isn’t a file you can find on your computer, it is embedded into the main .PSD file.) In this .PSB file you will find a Frame layer for that piece of wall art:

There are two parts to a Frame layer – the left hand icon represent the boundary of the frame. In a regular Photoshop usage, you would place this somewhere on an image canvas but here, we’ve filled the WHOLE canvas for that piece of wall art. The right icon represents the image that is INSIDE that frame. We need to change that image to whatever it is that you’d like to show.

To change the image, single-click on the LEFT icon of the layer:

In the properties window (you may need to open this if it is not already open – go to [Window]>[Properties] and make sure it’s ticked) you should see the following:

Click on the ‘Inset Image’ drop down (it will initially say ‘Place from Local Disk – Embedded’) – select ‘Place from Local Disk – Embedded’ and Photoshop will ask you to select an image to use.Alternatively you can drag an image from your folders straight into the frame

2020-04-05_00-25-06 — Once you've inserted your own image, it should look a little like this.

Once you have an image in the frame, you need to position it. To do this, click on the IMAGE thumbnail this time (rather than the frame placeholder thumbnail):

Go to [Edit]>[Free Transform] to position the image:

Drag / scale your image until it suits your taste and hit <Enter> to commit the transform

Now, close that – go to [File]>[Close] and Save the changes.
You should now see that the frame image has been updated:

Do the same thing with any other frames:

The realism of the finished Room Set, depends on adjusting the opacity and/or the layer mode for the group “Frame Images”. There are no clear rules for this – every image and every room set combination will need a little adjusting., Try changing the opacity and / or the mode to Multiply, Overlay, Hard Light or Normal:

Sometimes, it is also necessary to slightly soften your images – if they are too sharp within the finished Room Set they’ll look out of place. To do this simply add a blur to the Smart Object Layer. Click on the frame layer you want to change and go to [Filter]>[Blur]>[Gaussian Blur]. Usually a value of less than 1px is sufficient to help the images bed into the Room Set correctly.

Because you’re adjusting a filter onto a smart object, you can repeatedly go back and make changes without degrading the image in any way.

Adjust the opacity of the ‘Reflections’ layer (if there is one – matt wall art such as canvasses won’t need one) to suit you and your clients’ taste. Too much reflection can be distracting and can obscure parts of an image:

Too little and the frames can look like they’re made from a matt glass (such as the type found in museums):

If the Room Set has Colour Adjustments, BE CAREFUL! You need to be subtle for it to look realistic (if you require a particular colour wall, email us a photograph and we’ll see what we can create for you)

To alter a colour, expand the Colour Changer group and double click on the colour adjustment layer