What’s an easy way to improve your design portfolio?

Make your work look real.

Did you design a killer poster? Show it hanging on wall or on a billboard. If it’s a magazine, take a picture of someone reading it. A web page? Put it in a browser and show it on a monitor. In other words, don’t just show the design work, give it a context.

In many cases, you won’t be able to physically place it in a real-world setting. For example, most of us can’t afford to rent a billboard to post design work just to take a picture of it. Thanks to the miracle of Photoshop and digital cameras, you can easily fake your way to looking real.

Just go outside, take a picture of the real billboard, and use Photoshop to composite your design work with the picture you took. Designers call this staging.

Designers call this staging.

It's not an advice, it's a sales pitch. They're selling templates.

Edit: DP removed the link from the post above and now my response doesn't make much sense