Kanvas™ — Photorealistic Mockups From Your Artwork
Put your design on the real garment and generate studio-quality mockups: pick selected camera angles and print locations, batch colorways and multiple garments, pull art from a job and push renders back — every render auto-saves to Krate.
What Kanvas does
Kanvas is the mockup studio. You give it your artwork and a garment, and it generates photorealistic mockups of your design on that garment — front, back, sleeves, the angles you choose. Instead of faking a flat preview, it can ground the render on real catalog product photos, so the mockup matches the actual blank your shop will print. Open it by clicking Kanvas in the dashboard sidebar.
Kanvas has three tabs in its top bar: Studio (the full workspace below), Guided (a step-by-step wizard for the same result), and Library (everything you've generated). Start in Studio once you know the ropes; Guided is great the first few times.
Pick the garment and color
In the left rail's Garment tab, choose the garment — tees, hoodies, polos, tanks, and bottoms like joggers and shorts (filter by Tops or Bottoms) — then set fit, material, condition, and color. The color picker is backed by the master garment-color library, so the on-screen color reflects a real blank, not a guess. Search the library or pick from the swatches.
Ground it on the real garment (reference garments)
For a render that matches the actual product 1:1, open the "Start from" tab in the left rail and add a reference garment from your catalog. Kanvas pulls that SKU's on-file product photos (front first, then the rest) and feeds them into the render so the fabric, cut, and color are the real thing. The reference even drives the garment type — point it at a hoodie SKU and you get a hoodie, not a tee.
Add more than one reference garment to batch them — Kanvas renders your art on each one in turn (more on batching below).
Place your artwork per location
The right rail is where your design goes. Each print location is its own card:
- 1Click Add print location, then upload your artwork (image files up to 8 MB) into that card.
- 2Pick the location (full front, left chest, back, sleeves, nape/yoke, and the relevant spots for bottoms) — the options match the garment you chose.
- 3Set the print size and the decoration method for that location, with the right finish (e.g. screen print with a puff finish on the front, embroidery on a sleeve). Decoration is per-location, so one mockup can mix methods.
- 4Rotate the art 90° if it landed sideways, or swap it out anytime.
Leave the locations empty and Kanvas renders a clean blank garment. Add a location but forget the art and it'll nudge you — empty locations are blocked from generating so you never burn a render on a missing design.
Choose your angles and print locations to shoot
You decide how many shots come back. Pick the camera angles you want (front, back, three-quarter, detail close-ups, and more) and Kanvas generates a render for each one. Angles that carry artwork are always included automatically — so a sleeve print never gets orphaned. The top bar shows exactly how many renders the current setup will produce before you commit.
Use "More views" to add a couple of extra core angles in one click, or "Variations" to re-generate the current set for a fresh take.
Generate the set
Hit Generate. Kanvas renders your chosen angles (times your print locations) and lays them out as a contact sheet you can pack tighter or looser with the density toggle. Pick Standard or Premium quality — the top bar shows the per-image and total cost so there are no surprises. Click any render to open it full-screen in a navigable viewer.
Batch colorways and multiple garments
Need the same design on a black tee, a white tee, and a navy hoodie? Add several reference garments and Kanvas runs the whole set — each garment (and its color) rendered across your chosen angles, one after another, with progress shown as it goes. One setup, a full lineup of mockups.
Pull art from a job, push renders back
Kanvas connects to your jobs both ways. In the "Start from" tab, pick a job or quote and Kanvas pre-fills the garment, decoration, and any artwork already on it — tweak the look and generate. When the renders look right, the Save button becomes "Attach" and saves them straight onto that job, so the mockups live where the order does.
From the Library tab you can multi-select renders and attach them to a Kontrol job in one step.
Every render auto-saves to Krate
You never lose a paid render. The moment a mockup finishes, Kanvas auto-saves it to Krate (your file library) — even if you close the tab or get interrupted. The Save/Attach button is for the intentional save to a specific job; the auto-save is your safety net. Everything you've made is also browsable in the Library tab.