So I want to fold my sticker image in a way to make it appear that it is stuck to the box. I’ve tried playing with perspective, but everything I try looks really off.
Is there a way to do this that I’m completely missing?
I would prefer to do this in Photoshop or Illustrator.
Here is an overview on how I would do it with Inkscape, which should be easily translatable to Illustrator (if not, Inkscape is free). I won’t go into the details, as it is not your desired program.
Create something like this:
The rectangles on the left are squares with a border length corresponding to the border length of your cube.
Group the top square and top half of your sticker.
Select it and then the top element of the cube. Then apply modify path → perspective. (This step might be somewhat different in Illustrator.) You should get something like this:
If the sticker is misplaced, mirroring and rotating should help. Alternatively, you can mirror, reverse and rotate the top element of the cube before applying perspective.
Repeat steps 2 and 3 with the lowerer half. The result should look like this:
Ungroup everything and remove the remnants of what once were the squares, if desired.
What i usually do when I'm faced with a problem I can't seem to solve is try to find some example pictures.
In your case, the circle will become more of an ellipse. You could start by 'dumbing it down' to a square, and then see what that gives you.
Here are some examples:
