Hello welcome back to the Happy Hut - I'm Neil Mossey and I help as many people as possible
to get ideas out of their heads and out into the world to make as many people happy as
possible One of the best ways of doing that is right
here on YouTube If you are looking for how to make a thumbnail
for YouTube, I am so sorry, I feel your pain.
I'm so sorry that you are at that stage in your youtubing where you've realized that
thumbnails are important and a thing I put it off for years
Look at us.
A pair of unpaid google intern.
I mean we're slaves!
We're slaves to the YouTube algorithm so-- so yeah let's make our shackles and chains
that bit more appealing.
I'm going to show you some of the things that I use to make my youtube thumbnails for free
but man I hate it.
I hate making thumbnails.
Nobody likes making thumbnails.
You made a video, isn't that enough?
You've then got to upload it - right so you're doing video - done that... and then you've
got to write your description - done that... words.
And now?
And now you've got to start editing images?
I mean the hard thing is I'm actually quite good at Photoshop or the free equivalent GIMP
- but I'm not gonna get Photoshop out to make a thumbnail.
I just want a place to just put the thumbnail in... add some words and then get it out again.
And over the months and years I've managed to find a few tools and a few techniques to
do that as as easily as possible and completely for no money as possible.
But one thing I do promise you - hand on heart - I will not show you how to make those videos
where you look surprised in the thumbnail.
You know those really stupid thumbnails?
The really irritating thumbnails I'm not I'm not gonna do that I'm not gonna do that I
promise you.
The broken jazz hands and look-of-shock thumbnail shot
Actually I'm gonna - that is - that is exactly the thumbnail that I'm gonna use on this video,
just to make a point.
So let's jump into into YouTube this is what the tube studio dashboard looks like.
I've actually gone into my last video.
As you can see YouTube offers you three completely usable thumbnails.
They're quite, actually quite good at it I think there must be some beast like software
that can detect smiles and can avoid frames where your eyes are closed.
And I actually really like this thumbnail in the middle and that's the one I've selected.
But the first problem I had was that I actually want to add to that
I want to add some words to it I might even want to add another picture
I could not work out how to export a thumbnail from YouTube
I finally did manage it but it's a little little bit of a workaround
If you have a cell phone or a mobile phone as we call it here in the UK, the way that
I export thumbnails from YouTube - any one of the three that they offer you - is using
this.
It's an app called YT studio It's supposed to be the studio app for youtubing
When you go in there you can click on the dashboard
Click on "videos" from that pulldown menu, and choose the video that you want to play
with It gives you lots of details about the video
but up here if you click on the pen icon you can actually edit the video from the app
And there's a little tool in here which is great
If you go into the thumbnail there are the three thumbnails and you can see them there.
So if you choose the one that you want to export... save it... select the one that you
want and down there, hit "download thumbnail" That downloads the thumbnail to your phone
Now if you go over to google photos there is the thumbnail ready for you in all its
glory So all you need to do now is to go to Google
Photos, download that onto your computer, and use the software and that's what I'm going
to use next Now the next tool that I use for free is something
called spark on Adobe.com, so I'll put the link in the description.
If you type in "spark.Adobe.com" Now I know I'm scared of using Adobe products
because man do they like to hold you upside down and shake you around for money, but this,
I've been using this for about six months now
It's completely free - all you need to do is to set up an Adobe.com account which is
free I use that on my dirty email so they can't
spam me with marketing messages If you go into just the the opening page you'll
see you can use their templates - the pre-loaded templates.
So this is my dashboard here in Spark.
To create a new thumbnail, or new project even, see this plus sign at the top of the
page?
This is what will probably greet you when you go there for the first time - you sign
in for the first time - and they offer you all these different templates you know.
There's a flyer or a slideshow but what they also offer are YouTube thumbnails!
So if I click on that down here on the right hand side look at all these pre-made YouTube
thumbnails you can use.
See you could choose this one for instance Click "create" and you can change absolutely
anything on this template, so this block of text here?
If you click on the the pencil icon again - click Edit - you can change that to "my
thumbnail" Click "done" but you can make that bigger
by dragging these corners here and it just it just works it all out for you
It's really lovely.
You could change this picture at the back here and that's what, that's what we're gonna
do at the moment, so I'm gonna go to some thumbnails that I've made in the past...
So as you can see it saves as you go along I'll probably delete that - so I've developed
a bit of a template for myself Sometimes it might have four pictures in there
- or one big picture and a block of text - and I think that's what I'm going to go with for
this latest video So what I'll do is, I'll duplicate a thumbnail
that I've already made and we'll call it "transcribe thumbnail"
Hit duplicate - so it should have duplicated it here and it hasn't shown it on the dashboard,
but if I go into "edit project" hopefully all the bits that I need will be there
There it is fantastic I want a block of text, and I want the nice
thumbnail that YouTube have already chosen for me, so firstly I'll change the block of
text I want that to run along the bottom there,
and I can change this image - and you can change the image on the template thumbnails
that they give you - so if I just click on the image and then I'll go up to "replace"
Now what I'll do is I'll upload the photo that I downloaded from Google photos because
I downloaded it from the YouTube studio app .
I hope that makes sense I've gone into Google photos and there is
the thumbnail that YouTube offered which I liked and I'll click on download
Back into spark, if I hit upload photo, right so now I am uploading the thumbnail picture...
there it is!
I want to make this text smaller, just so it runs along the bottom here, so what I would
do is click "Edit" and I'll change the words So we'll change this to something like "transcribe
for free" I want it big so it reads - so I might put
it in the middle - or put it in the bottom - the bottom there - and it sort of works
out all the proportions for you You can change anything that you want on the,
on the words, so you can change the font I prefer the one I've got
You can change the colors, you can change the size or the line spacing and I've sometimes
done that just to get more words in...
But it's a really brilliant resource to just be able to just sling in the words and sling
in a picture and it saves as you go along so now if I hit download... so now that I've
downloaded it I can now upload it as a thumbnail And there it is - and that's it!
It really is such an easy way to just grab a thumbnail that youtube has offered
Maybe manipulate it a little bit or add some extra pictures, add some words, then download
that image and then re-upload it as a thumbnail So I hope this video has helped give you some
ideas for how to export a thumbnail from YouTube - to give you somewhere to go for free - to
manipulate it and some text maybe add any other images that you want to and then export
and download that image that you can then use as a thumbnail
It's a little system that I've managed to use for a lot of videos now
If you've reached this point in the video and it has helped well why not give me a thumbs
up just to let me know that someone reached this point in the video
And if you're feeling even kinder, if you were to hit on the subscribe button that would
just show me some love that I crave - but also I'm craving subscribers - trying to get
to a thousand subscribers - probably exactly the same as you...
One day we'll be monetized!
You and me... making thumbnails.
For little to no money, but in the meantime good luck with your thumbnail creating
I'll see you on the next video.
Can you please help my daddy get 1000 subscribers just click on his face.
Thanks!
Bye!
How was that?