- Over the years that I've been making videos
for this channel,
I've built up a collection of tools that I use
to help me script, film, edit, publish,
and promote my videos here on YouTube.
In this video,
I'm going to be sharing my seven favorite free tools
so that you too can make the most
out of your content creation,
and the best part is,
all of these tools are completely free.
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Before we dive into the first tool,
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So our first category is design and thumbnails
and our first tool within that category is Pixlr.
This is a simple online tool
that will automatically remove the background
from your photos
and leave you with just the subject.
This is super useful for any thumbnails
where you want your face or a product included,
but with the ability to create
a more interesting background.
The automatic removal seems to work really well,
especially if your image is really sharp,
but if it doesn't get it quite right,
adjusting the image to remove bits around the subject
is really simple.
Once you're done,
you can then download the finished image,
without the background,
so that you can use it in whatever software you wish to
or upload it to something like Canva,
which is our tool number two.
Canva is a free-to-use online graphic design tool
that you can use to create your thumbnails, logos,
end cards, social media posts,
really anything that you want.
It's really intuitive to use,
even people completely new to graphic design
can quite quickly create something
by starting with one of thousands of different templates
and then changing the colors, text, fonts,
and images as they please.
I personally use Canva every week
to create Instagram Stories
that promote when my podcast is going live on Spotify
or Apple Podcasts,
and I've even used it a few times
when needing some inspiration
for some of the thumbnails
that you might have seen on this channel.
Some of the templates and stock footage
are locked behind Canva's premium tier,
but there's absolutely loads that you can do
with just the free tier
and I'd highly recommend you creating an account
and having a play around.
Thumbsup.tv is an absolute must visit website
if you're serious about YouTube.
It allows you to test
various different title and thumbnails combinations
to see exactly how they will be shown
in various different places on YouTube.
From Desktop to mobile,
home page to suggested,
you'll be able to check that your thumbnail is visible
even at the smallest of resolutions.
I use this for every single upload
to test things like the length of my titles,
making sure that they don't get cut off,
and also to make sure that none of YouTube's UI elements
block any important parts of my thumbnail.
You can even toggle
between seeing it in YouTube's light or dark mode
to make sure that your thumbnail still stands out.
A couple of last little websites
that I've had bookmarked through the years
are Design Gradients and Coolors.
Design Gradients is a simple website
full of beautiful different gradients
and their color hexcodes that you can use
if you ever need a background gradient.
I also even use it to generate new gradients
for the lights that I use
in the backgrounds of my videos.
Coolors is a website
that generates full color palettes for you,
where all the colors will work aesthetically together.
You can even here lock certain colors
and generate the unlocked colors again
until you find a color scheme that works for you.
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When it comes to what software I recommend
for people looking to actually edit their videos,
it no longer matters if you're looking for a free
or a paid solution,
the answer is DaVinci Resolve.
Long gone are the days
where I recommend Adobe's Premiere Pro,
as the software just feels so archaic now,
it's ridden with bugs that cause crashes,
and it's just not built to take advantage
of these fancy encoders that we have
in our NVIDIA GPUs.
DaVinci Resolve however feels fast and modern,
it comes in both free and paid studio versions,
but the free version really doesn't feel limited at all.
It gives you loads of the editing, color grading,
visual effects, and exporting options
you'd expect for a modern editor,
but it's all for free.
Seriously, there's no reason
to learn anything else nowadays,
if I was starting from scratch,
I'd 100% be learning DaVinci Resolve.
There are some great YouTube channels out there
teaching you how to do all sorts of things
in DaVinci Resolve,
from the basics
right up to some really complicated things.
MrAlexTech and Patrick Stirling
are both awesome dudes with great channels
that you should really check out.
Photopea or Photopea,
however you want to pronounce it,
is a browser-based image editor
that basically replicates 80 to 90%
of Photoshop's capabilities,
but for free, and in your browser.
You can even open Photoshop PSD files,
so if you've ever downloaded a stream design
or a thumbnail PSD file,
you can open it,
edit any of the layers as you please,
and export it just as you would with Photoshop.
If you've ever used Photoshop before,
all the tools here should feel instantly familiar,
but if not, the layout is so similar
that you can basically follow
any Photoshop tutorial on YouTube
and still achieve the same results with Photopea.
Seriously, the number of times
I've needed to edit a PSD file whilst being away from home
has made Photopea a permanent bookmark in my browser,
it's just such a handy tool to have at your disposal.
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One of the biggest mistakes
that I see new YouTubers making in their videos
is not using enough B-Roll
to keep their audience as engaged.
While ideally, I'd always recommend going out
and capturing this B-Roll footage yourself,
sometimes it just isn't feasible.
Maybe you don't have access to the right equipment,
or don't live near a location that you need to include,
whatever the reason is,
that is where stock footage comes in.
Pexels is a website
dedicated to offering free stock footage
for use in your videos.
There's a massive library which is easily searchable
and videos can be downloaded
in a variety of different resolutions
to suit your project.
You don't even need to create an account,
just simply browse or search
for the type of video you're looking for
and then download any videos you wish to use.
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When it comes to actually managing
the Gaming Careers YouTube channel
and the life cycle that videos go through
from scripting all the way through to publishing,
I use a tool called Notion.
It is single-handedly the best workspace
that I found for managing and collaborating
with other people,
and I've been using it for about 3 years now.
You can build templates and databases
to function completely as you wish to
and things can be as simple or as complicated
as you need them to be.
You can view these databases as Kanban boards,
calendars, or tables
and it just makes managing multiple projects,
especially with multiple team members,
so much easier.
Most of my Notion setup was originally based
on Thomas Frank's video from a few years ago
and then I've slowly adapted over time
to better suit my needs.
Honestly, I could probably dedicate an entire video
to how I use Notion for my YouTube channel,
so let me know if you'd like to see that,
but I'd highly recommend you start managing your videos
or any other projects with Notion,
it's a game changer.
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The final tool that I've heard many members of the community
have great success with
is Mercury by StreamElements.
It's essentially a handful of tools
that can help automate some unique functionality
for your YouTube channel.
You can do things
like dynamically update your YouTube banner
with a subscriber goal,
or thanking your latest members in the YouTube descriptions
that will automatically update
whenever you get a new member.
For anyone who's using Patreon,
you can even automatically generate graphics
that you can put at the end of your videos
which thank your latest supporters.
StreamElements are constantly adding new features to Mercury
so I'm hopeful that in time,
this could become a really useful tool
to have on your YouTube Swiss army knife.
Hopefully, some of these tools that I use
have now made into your bookmarks
for your next video,
but please do share below any tools that you use
that I haven't heard of yet.
The great thing about making videos like this
is that I can learn from you guys too.
If you've enjoyed this video,
please give it a thumbs up,
and why not check out my video
on "7 FREE Tools For Streamers"
whilst you're here.
Thanks as always for watching.
I'll catch you in the next one. Peace!