- [Instructor] Hey, everybody, this is Roberto Blake,
of RobertoBlake.com,
and, today, I'm going to show you
how to create a YouTube thumbnail
using Adobe Photoshop and the basic tools.
And I'm gonna do it by creating the thumbnail
for this particular video.
So let's go ahead and open up a new file in Photoshop.
For YouTube thumbnails, we're make this 920 by 1080.
Some people try and make these 1280 by 720,
I prefer to just go 920 by 1080, full HD resolution.
Just because it's the best representation
of a YouTube thumbnail in any situation.
So that's what I always go with.
So we're just gonna hit Create here.
So this is your basic whiteboard and canvas
for working in Adobe Photoshop.
One of the first things you'll probably want to do
is release the background layer.
You're gonna hold down Alt and just double click.
And that will release the background layer.
We can go ahead and still name this Background.
That just makes things convenient.
We probably won't worry about this too much
in terms of what we're gonna do.
Now, for a lot of you, creating a border in your artwork,
is gonna help your YouTube thumbnail stand out.
So that's the first thing we're going to do.
And we need to make that a layer
that will stand on top of all the other layers.
So the quick way that I do it is, I create a new layer.
And I just go down to the panel and I click on that.
I usually just go ahead and fill it with black.
You can use any color you want.
And then what I do is I use the Effects panel.
And you can just go down here to Effects,
go to Stroke,
and you're gonna pick a color.
In this case, I'm going to pick a blue color.
I'll probably adjust this a little bit later.
And instead of one pixel, I'm gonna set this to 16 pixels.
You'll notice that I have it set for the Inside.
If you have it set by Outside, which is default,
it won't show up.
So we're just gonna put it for the Inside here.
And that should be enough.
You can use 16 or you can go with 20.
I just usually go with 16.
So we're gonna click OK.
Now this layer is above everything else.
What I wanna do is I wanna do two things.
I wanna take the Fill down to zero,
which leaves us with the border
because the Fill doesn't effect the Effects layer there.
The Opacity would and you can see that
that just gets rid of everything.
So you're going to want to go ahead
and just put the Fill down to zero instead.
And once you've done that, we're gonna lock this layer
so that we don't effect it in any way.
So now we can't touch that layer.
It's done.
Alright, so that's gonna give you that border
that sits above everything.
(clicking)
The next thing we need is,
is we need some kind of background for this.
I'm just going to go ahead
and make a gray background for now.
Just to be able to fill in text and assets
because what I'm going to do is,
I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to just paste
a background that I've already chosen for this.
Which is gonna be the Photoshop user interface itself.
So I'm just gonna paste that in as my background.
And so you can see that that's what I have going on here.
And I do want it to fill up all of this here.
And I'm going to go ahead and just move this
below that border.
Because I want that to be the top layer here.
And this is all going to make sense in a little bit,
in terms of what I'm doing.
So I've got that.
If I want to go ahead and I want to make
that just less prominent, I can reduce the opacity.
And I haven't decided whether or not
I'm going to commit to that or not.
Another thing I could do
is I could mess with the blend modes here.
I could put this on Soft Light.
Or I could put this on Multiply.
There's just different things I can do.
I need to see how this is gonna look with the other things
that I want to do in Photoshop.
And, in other tutorials, I will show you
how to do other things,
like cut yourself out of a background.
I've actually done a ton of Photoshop tutorials.
If you wanna beef up your Photoshop skills,
I'm just gonna show you how I, more or less,
do the YouTube channel thumbnails
that you're used to seeing me make.
So the next thing I'm gonna do is,
I have a character that I use.
You guys have seen it before.
It's a mini Roberto character that I had made for me
by Joshua Pomeroy of Pomeroy Creative.
And I use that with a lot of other different assets.
So, some of my assets come from Graphics Stock
and Adobe Stock.
I'm gonna link to a lot of the different resources
that I use for just making artwork here.
So you can use all the same things as me.
And, if you want to, you can go ahead and get those.
I'm gonna go ahead and take my custom character
and then I'm gonna drag him here.
So now I can position him wherever I want.
And you can kind of see what I'm going for.
Now, I brought him in.
And I'm going to just go ahead and commit to this
at full size right now
so that I can show you that this is a Smart Object.
And when you make something into a Smart Object,
you can resize it, small or big,
and it'll remain with the same resolution and image quality.
So that's actually a good thing here.
So what I wanna do is,
I think that this is the size that I want.
And this is the positioning that I think I want.
I just have to kind of decide here.
And what I'm going for, in this case,
is I can go with a couple of different options.
I can put him over here.
And I know that, right around this area,
is where the YouTube is going to put the timestamp.
And so I'd made it just big enough
to where it wouldn't block the
create something awesome on the t-shirt.
And I could just put the text over here.
And I think that's the direction that I might go with this.
But I could always go the other way
and I could aways, you know, put him over here.
And then I could put the text on the right hand side.
So it's kind of a either-or thing.
In this case, I just think for visual balance,
I'm going to put him over here.
And that that's going to look good.
And then I'm going to create my text.
I'm going to go ahead
and I'm going to use a font called Bebas Neue.
And if you use Adobe, you'll have access to this.
But I also think you can get it as a free download as well.
But I use Adobe Typekit,
and that gives me access to this font.
So I'm just gonna go ahead and make my title now.
(clicking)
Alright, so that actually doesn't look too bad.
There are adjustments that I want to make to this.
I think I wanna bring this over just a little bit.
And that I wanna lock it up just a little bit differently.
I think that looks good.
One of the things that I want to do
is I want to try to match the blue in here
to the Photoshop logo.
So I'm gonna unlock the border here.
I'm gonna click on the Stroke.
And then I'm gonna use the Eyedropper
to just kind of select that blue.
And now it all matches, in terms of the branding.
So I think that that actually looks pretty good.
So I'm just gonna lock this again.
And now there are a couple of things that I can do.
If I think that this needs to be a little bit darker,
just to help all this stand off,
what I can do is I can switch over to the black here.
And I can go ahead and just use the Paint Bucket Tool
and fill that with black.
And then I can just go ahead and reduce the Opacity,
so that we can still see what's going on there.
And then I can play with the blending mode.
I can switch it to something like Overlay
and see if that helps.
Or Multiply.
Usually, you could do it with Normal.
But, sometimes, this just helps the effect a little bit.
Just depends on what you want to do with the blend modes.
I kind of want us to still be able to see
that this is the Photoshop interface.
I just don't want it to make things harder to read.
But, if I feel like it's, you know, fine like this
and we can at least tell that it's Photoshop,
then here's another option,
in terms of how I can make this text
a little bit more visible.
And you guys have seen me do this in thumbnails before.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take the Shape Tool.
I'm gonna make sure that it has a Stroke on it here.
And we're gonna just set this Stroke to six
as a hard even number.
And what I can do is I can make a rectangular box
that stretches out like this,
and I can just make sure that it sits on the layer
behind my little guy and behind the text.
And you can see that that helps this whole thing
stand out a little bit more.
I don't have to leave it black, though.
I can make this more interesting.
I can double click.
And I can choose either this color
or I can choose this color.
Just to kind of have it match a little bit.
I think that this helps add a little something to it.
I like that.
And I'm gonna reduce the Fill.
I'm going to reduce the Fill to maybe
something like, I don't know, 50, 60 percent.
Just something to where I can still keep some of that color.
And to where we can still see through it.
And it just makes the whole thing feel a bit more dynamic.
It makes it pop.
But, again, I'm not sure how much I like that.
I might need to change the color.
I might need to adjust this.
So I can.
This might fit a little bit better
with our whole Photoshop thing,
just giving it a darker blue
even if it doesn't match up all the way.
I think that actually doesn't look too bad.
So now we have our basic thumbnail.
There are just a few finishing touches
that I wanna add to this,
that can really help it a little bit.
So what I'm gonna do in this case is,
I have a color Fill here.
And by setting this to an Opacity of about 35,
let's actually make that 30,
I think that's actually a little better at 30,
actually, I'll tell you what, let's make it 40.
By setting that at 40,
I'm giving that a little bit of a color treatment.
I've changed the blend mode from Normal to Color.
And so that gives that a color wash.
And, so, by turning it down from 100 percent, here,
where, you know, that would just have the whole thing
looking just a little bit too blue,
I moved it down to about 40 percent.
You know, 50 might be okay.
So, you just kinda have to play with this
and see what you want.
We'll settle at 45.
And so that actually looks pretty good here.
I kind of want a subheading here.
I've already typed it out in a brush font.
And, so, that is simple tutorial,
with an exclamation point.
And this is just using Brush Script.
That should be a font that you have in Photoshop
with Adobe Typekit.
If not, I'm sure you can find
a brush style font on the internet.
One of the websites that I use is DaFont.com.
I also use MyFonts and Font Squirrel.
And, so, I do kind of like that.
I might position this slightly differently
because I do kind of like it dipping into this here.
So maybe that's something that we do.
Because that just makes it slightly more dynamic.
Makes it interesting.
And so, yeah.
The other thing is, I have some vector shapes.
You can get these from Graphics Stock.
I've got a little arrow here that points.
And I think I have another one around here.
Nope, that's not the one.
Here it is.
So these little things just kind of help
a little bit with eye-direction,
and just draw more attention to this title.
And, again, I can do some tweaking
and I can position them if I think that things
are just like, you know,
a little too on the nose or something like that.
I think this is probably fine.
One of the other things I've done is,
I know that this area is where,
you know, YouTube likes to put text in the end card.
And down here is where YouTube likes to use
for the timestamp.
So I just kinda positioned all of my stuff
with that in mind.
So sometimes you'll want to do that.
If you really wanted to be fancy, you could, like,
take a screenshot of a YouTube thumbnail
and see where the end card and where the text is,
and you could just make borders.
But usually something around here is probably accurate.
And so I like to try to put my text more in the middle now,
to avoid YoutTube kind of overrunning it
with those different things.
So that's just how I'm doing my thumbnails nowaday.
And I will do other types of thumbnails.
I'll do thumbnails where
maybe I cut myself out of the background.
I've already done tutorials on how to do this in Photoshop.
So you'll definitely wanna check out
my Photoshop tutorials playlist.
Those videos are a bit old,
but most of the Photoshop tools remain the same.
So those will still work the way that I've done them.
And you can go ahead and check those out.
They're here on the YouTube channel.
Also, I will probably do more videos like this.
I'll probably do a video
on how to make YouTube channel artwork.
I'll probably do some on how to make banner ads,
and Twitter and Facebook headers,
if that's something you guys are interested in.
So if you guys want to see more tutorials from me
using different software,
let me know in the comments section.
What software do you want me to do tutorials on?
Is it more Adobe stuff, is it something else?
Do you guys want me to show you
how to do this same kind of thing using Canva
or some other type of image editing software,
if Photoshop's not what you have?
Anyway, like this video if you like it,
don't forget to subscribe,
check out the other awesome stuff on the channel.
As always, you guys, thanks so very much for watching,
and don't forget, create something awesome today.
Take care.
(upbeat electronic music)