What's up beautiful people? It is your homegirl, Shameless, all up in my girl's building.
It's Techie Tuesday!
Let's get it--y'all want to know about the thumbnails. How to make them, how to make them better.
I'm going to show you what I do and we'll hop on in. So this is the YouTube homepage. You'll see a bunch of thumbnails.
And if you are surfing YouTube and you don't know what to click, you're going to click on the thing that's most intriguing, visually.
Advertisers spend millions of dollars, celebrities in Hollywood be getting a lot of work done, trying to keep up with the young folks.
It's all about presentation. Image.
The same theory applies to thumbnails. So this, for example...
This is a very captivating thumbnail. And what makes it interesting is the graphics, the color, and how tight of a shot it is--
so you can actually see what the video is going to be about. Those are the most effective thumbnails.
I mean, there are other YouTubers that just have a hardcore following that will click on anything they upload.
But if you're trying to get new eyeballs, you want to invest in those thumbnails.
So I'll do a screenshot.
An example of a screenshot... this is a video.
Took the shoes out. Because I didn't have my remote with me so I just did video.
And I lie down. And then the screenshot; I will pause... wait. Okay, there. Good enough.
So screenshot. Hold down Command + Shift + 4 on MACs. Or you guys might have your system configured differently.
But I will select the area I want screenshot. It has now gone here onto my desktop.
Now I can drag and open that in Photoshop. And this is it. Now, the dimensions of a photo are 4 x 6. That's the ratio, that's the dimension.
In YouTube, the thumbnail dimension, at least the last time I checked, was 16 x 9.
But anyway, you're going to hit the marquee tool, which is the M, the letter M shortcut.
And you'll see on this dial, there's Normal, Fixed Ratio, and Fixed Size. Click Fixed Ratio.
Make sure it's 16 x 9, and then you're going to click--I don't want this dude in my photo--so I'm going to click here, and drag it... and that's what I want.
So Image > Crop. Command + 'D', that's what it is. Then I will hit Layers. I want it to pop more.
So I'm going to make the blacks blacker...
and the colors more intense, so the Saturation.
Layers--and then I will select all of them, hit Command + 'E', or you can go to Layer > Flatten Image.
And I will sharpen it. And there you have it.
And then I'll save it: File > Save For Web. JPEG > Very High > 97 > Save. I always use the abbreviation 'YT'... and beach, or whatever the name of the video is.
I'm going to put the number 2 because I already have that saved.
This is another example of an image. Now, I actually took this photo. I didn't take this photo--sorry. My friend Shannon
took this photo on a video shoot for this. You can also put text, with the letter 'T'.
You want to make sure that the size of this is 1200 pixels. It can be bigger or smaller; I have settled on 1200.
And then select the area, and then we'll put ''80s Dance Off''.
And then you save it--that's that, call it a day.
That's it! I'll see you guys.
I won't be uploading every Tuesday. I need to get some time for myself.
I'm going to try to get my life happening off of YouTube, so every other Tuesday...
Just tune in every Tuesday, okay? There will be something. Something worth clicking.
I have hundreds of videos--literally--and you can go through it. I have playlists. Make sure you guys subscribe, like, sharing is caring
so share this video on your other platforms. Tweet it, Facebook it.
Comment below and let me know what you guys want to see for next Techie Tuesday.
And also, when's your birthday? When's your birthday and how old are you because my birthday is May 20th! Yay, it's coming up!
Remember to do you, be you, and stay true. Be shameless.
Make sure you guys check out my previous Techie Tuesday video, watch my video playlist that has a wealth of information
on how to make videos for YouTube. Check it out.