How to design a 3d box or cube in Photoshop

Sun cube

I created this image to represent the idea of “Energy in a Box”.

The secret of making a box in Photoshop is to use guides and enabling the Snap to Guides feature to make sure everything looks as it should do.

I started with selecting a 2d side (or sides) for the box. I chose a sun image to represent energy. I added some Inner Glow around the edges and saved the document. I then created a slightly larger Photoshop file and proceeded to set my guides (see below).

Paste the 2d shape into the file and use the Free Transform tool (Cmd/Ctrl-T) and, holding down Cmd or Ctrl, drag the corners of the 2d shape to the correct point where the guides intersect.

You may decide to darken some areas of the cube to increase the 3d effect.

Sun cube tutorial

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This article was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Photoshop.
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9 Responses to “How to design a 3d box or cube in Photoshop”

  1. Webmaster blog, on April 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 am, said:

    From where to get such “sun” images ?

  2. Rob Cubbon, on April 4th, 2008 at 11:17 pm, said:

    I either got it from http://istockphoto.com or http://shutterstock.com

  3. New Age, on July 24th, 2008 at 10:14 pm, said:

    I think we can create such images with different blending options so there is no need to purchase such images. i have tried the cube many times(when i started photoshop) and that was the most difficult thing to do. I think it is pretty easy to build a cube now.

  4. Rob Cubbon, on July 28th, 2008 at 12:14 pm, said:

    Thank you New Age, it’s easy once you know how.

  5. Passive Harry, on August 1st, 2008 at 3:27 pm, said:

    Rob, Your Mysql has some problems with comments as it returned with my first comment. I am not sure if this comment is going to be posted or not. I like both sites in your comment and both of them are pretty good at image stuff.

  6. Rob Cubbon, on August 1st, 2008 at 8:04 pm, said:

    Thank you so much, Passive Harry, for the encouraging comment but even more so for alerting me to the “MySQL server has gone away” error message which you got when you tried to post your comment. This is where readers can be so vitally important to a website. I found a fix for this issue here: http://robsnotebook.com/wordpress-mysql-gone-away and it seems to have done the trick but I will be keeping an eye on it. Thanks a million, Harry. Thanks, Rob, for the fix!

  7. Steve, on October 17th, 2008 at 1:12 am, said:

    Nice little tutorial, I used this to create a software box and it worked a treat.

  8. Rob Cubbon, on January 19th, 2009 at 5:29 pm, said:

    Great, Steve, I’m glad it was useful.

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