Photo on screen (pop-out effect) in Adobe Photoshop

Published on November 17, 2022

Photo on screen (with pop-out effect)

In this blog I’ll show you how to place your photo on a (phone) screen with a 3D pop-out effect in Adobe Photoshop.

Rather watch the video with instructions? Click here or scroll down to the end of this page.

You can download the files I used here:
Phone
Portrait

Step 1: Select screen

Open the file with the phone and the file with the photo you want to place on the screen.

First open the file with the phone. Use the quick selection tool to select the phone screen. Then press CTRL+J to duplicate the selected area. You now have a new layer with only the screen and a transparent background. I name this layer ‘screen’.

Step 2: Photo on screen

Open the file with the photo you want to place on the screen. Select the move tool and drag this photo towards the file with the phone. Place the photo over the phone. You now have a new layer, I name this layer ‘photo’.

With the photo layer selected, navigate to ‘Select > Subject‘. Photoshop will then select your subject. This is the area that will pop out of the screen. If you’d rather use another method to select your subject, that’s fine too! You can also use another method if you want to select something else than the subject.

Press CTRL+J to duplicate the selected area. You now have a new layer with the subject and a transparent background. I name this layer ‘subject’.

Select the photo layer. This layer should be directly above the screen layer. Then navigate to ‘Layer > Create clipping mask‘ or press ALT+CTRL+G. The photo layer is now clipped to the one below it (the screen).

Then select the subject layer and the photo layer. Press CTRL+T to activate free transform. You can now resize, move and rotate the photo on the screen.

Step 3: Adjust pop-out effect

The entire subject now pops out of the screen (including the kimono at the bottom of the screen). I don’t want the entire subject to pop out though. To solve that, select the subject layer and add a layer mask.

Then select the brush tool. Make the foreground color black. I use a hard round brush, opacity 100%.

Make sure the layer mask is selected. Then brush over the area you want to place inside of the screen. To make that area you just placed inside of the screen pop out again, simply brush over it with white as the foreground color.