Hi NXFX

If your original images are all the same size you could record a command or action in an image editor. It wouldn't be fool proof but you could certainly get the majority of the work done.

Batch Processing [webmasterworld.com]

Also, I can pretty much guarantee there will be a plug-in or standalone software for it - a search for "product box maker software" turned up a raft of sites in that area.

Why not try CSS instead to build a fake product box? That way if you want to completely change your site design you can do quite easily, and the pictures will be a smaller size.

Perhaps you could expand the #*$! dropshadow technique:
[#*$!.com...]

It'll take a bit of work but it might be worth it.

I'm usually using a full blown 3D application for this. However I need 3D artwork for other things too, so its a side-product. If you are doing it in 3D in the first place, you have all options to change perspectives, lighting, shadows etc.

But of course with 500 titles this might be a challenge. My 3D application can use a network rendering process. It is possible to batch-create the configuration files, so as long as the source images have the same dimensions it has to be fairly easy.

hi,
there are many scripts in the market which you need to add to Photoshop and some are Standalone softwares, whcih create that 3D shape for you. They normally range from $45-200.

I myself design these boxes, but I create the shape manually with my knowledge of Photoshop.

Stephen

I've made a basic application in Flash for doing this. It's lacks a nice GUI because it's only been for me but it calculates the box from a series of variables and applies perpective to it. I don't have lighting on it because I don't want lighting but you could easily export an alpha map and do your lighting in Photoshop manually.

If it's useful to you, I could spare some time to make a GUI for it. Currently I just screenshot the display but I could also make it export a JPEG too.

Let me know if you want this.

~groover

Though I might lose a contract here, I dug a bit and found the solution for the scenario where you use a full featured 3D application (as I do):

Make all the different textures the same size

From the single textures, create an animated texture, where each frame consists of a new image

Render a movie with the same framelength as you have single textures

Set the output settings to single images

So if you have 500 textures, you create a single, animated texture with 500 frames. Then you render a movie(!) with 500 frames, and store the result as single images. So for each new frame in the movie you get a single image with the box rendered with a fresh texture image.

You can even add a slow camera movement to the movie render, so you get slightly different angles each time.

Hope that helps. Anybody interested in outsourcing such a job send me a sticky.