T-shirt Mockup Generator — put your design on a tee, locally

The "realism" of a tee mockup comes down to one thing: does the design follow the fabric's folds? The simplest approach is a "flat overlay" — paste the design straight onto a tee photo; zero cost but fake, because the art is flat and ignores the wrinkles. The next step up is a "displacement map": using the tee's own light and shadow as the map (dark = wrinkle valley, bright = highlight), you warp the design's pixels via bilinear interpolation so the art looks printed onto the undulating cloth. That step runs purely in canvas in the browser, and MockCat uses this light displacement to pull ahead of "flat sticker" — without heavy WebGL, staying free, local and instant.

A few tips to get the most from an in-browser tee mockup: use a transparent PNG so only the art lands (no white box); don't oversize it — chest-centered and slightly high, at a sensible scale, reads most like a real print; use the color variants to check a few versions (the same art looks very different on a white vs black tee — light art on dark, dark art on light usually reads clearer); and don't max the wrinkle strength — a gentle follow of the folds is enough, too much distorts. You can drag all of this out live in MockCat and export when it looks right.

When is an in-browser mockup not enough, and you need photographic mockups? When you need photo-real e-commerce hero shots of a real model wearing your tee in a real scene — different bodies, skin tones, lighting and poses — which canvas can't do; you need a dedicated photographic library. Placeit is exactly that, with thousands of on-body, flat-lay and lifestyle tee mockups you drag your design into. So MockCat's lane is: ship a free, fast "print preview / design draft," and once the design's confirmed — print and sell it on Printful, or get e-commerce-grade real scenes from Placeit. We do the free, lightweight stage; the heavy scenes go to a licensed paid library.