- If you're looking to create your thumbnail images
for your YouTube videos using your Android device,
then in this video, I'm gonna show you step by step
how to do it using the best Android thumbnail app right now.
(upbeat pop music)
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video,
where we help entrepreneurs and business owners
amplify their business and brand with video.
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then make sure you click that subscribe button.
And all the links to everything we mention in this video,
you can find linked in the description box below.
So let's jump into it.
Now we all know that smartphones
are an awesome mobile video creation device,
and with the right apps,
you can easily create your YouTube thumbnails
on your Android smartphone or Android tablet as well.
So this means that you can actually shoot, edit,
and upload, and release your YouTube videos
without leaving your Android device.
So right now, we're gonna run through exactly
how to create your YouTube thumbnail images on Android,
and to get it done quick and easy.
And once we're done,
I'll also hook you up with our free step by step guide
that you can download to level up your smartphone video game
next time you're shooting on your Android.
All right, so first off, the apps.
Now, we tested an absolutely ton of them.
There are so many out there.
Things like Canva, things like PixelLab, Thumbnail Maker,
Pixomatic, and really, the list goes on.
Now while you can definitely create
thumbnail images in these apps,
is really comes down to the feature set
and how easy it is to control and move everything around
and get creative with your thumbnail creation,
but also while keeping the simplicity there
so that you can do it fast and easy.
Now while Canva seems to be a really popular option
for creating thumbnail images on your Android device,
our top pick right now actually goes to PixelLab.
And that really comes down to, as I said,
the feature set and the ease of use.
It is an amazing app.
Now one really quick tip before we jump into the walkthrough
showing you how to use PixelLab
is if you're gonna be creating thumbnail images
where you're in them, so you've got a photo of you,
then definitely add this into your filming process
or plan this out.
What most people would do
is they'll try to find a freeze frame
or a frame grab from their completed video,
something in there where they're mid-sentence
or got kind of a half smile.
I would strongly recommend that while filming,
either before or after,
you just pose for a few different photos.
So smile, point at stuff,
put your hands up, pull some silly faces.
Give yourself some options,
so that when you're actually creating your thumbnail images,
it's so much easier to get a clean image out
and something that you're happy to use
than to try and find one buried
in your completed video somewhere.
So that's a really handy tip,
and it's gonna save you a heap of time.
So now for the walkthrough.
Okay, so this is the first thing you'll see
when you open up PixelLab.
You can see there's a heap of templates
and things that you can use down the side.
But this is the area that we're going to be working in.
Now you can see straight out
that we are not in the right aspect ratio.
This is currently a square.
We want it at 16 by nine, or widescreen
to match the correct size for YouTube.
So we'll come up here in the top-right corner.
Let's choose image size.
So what you wanna make sure here
is that your aspect ratio is 16 by nine,
and how you can do that is you either come down
to the custom preset here and choose YouTube thumbnail,
and that will enter the correct width and height for you.
Or if you wanna create a higher resolution
or higher quality thumbnail,
then you can also manually set this to 1920
by 1080.
So either one of those two will be fine.
I like to do it the high resolution
just so there's more data and information there
if I'm gonna repurpose this thumbnail to be used elsewhere.
So we'll hit OK.
You can see now that our canvas is widescreen.
So because the thumbnail images we've got have me in them,
so I've got a photo that I've already taken
or a screen grab I've already taken,
I'll come up to the plus button here,
and let's choose import from gallery, pick the photo there.
And here, you just wanna make sure
that down on the side bit here
that 16 by nine is the ratio that you're gonna be using,
so it's widescreen.
Then come down and hit the tick,
and that image is now brought in.
Now we can scale it up by pressing on this circle here.
And we can move it around and reposition it,
so we can make it a bit bigger than we want
to move it off to one side or off to the other side,
somewhere around here, maybe even a little bit bigger,
so make a bit bigger.
To the right, better move me off to the side.
Okay, so now that we've got our background image in place,
we can actually lock it,
so that it's not gonna be moved around.
So if we come over here to the layers up here,
you can see that that is on its own layer there.
So if we hit the little padlock,
then we know that if I tap on this and move around,
it's not actually going to move that around.
Now you can always come back and unlock it
if you wanna make adjustments to it.
But at least for now while we're done with that
for this first pass, then it's not going to move around.
So now we wanna add in some text,
so we'll come over here to the plus, and chose text.
This is our text here, so we can tap on that,
move it around.
Obviously, it doesn't look very good yet.
So let's start out by editing the text.
So if we come over here to edit,
let's make this, How To Edit.
Done, okay.
Now over this side here,
we've got all the rest of the options to make it bigger.
So we can go to size, we can scale it up, How To Edit,
with something like that.
We can keep coming down.
Let's start with font.
Now you can go through here
and find whichever font you like.
Let's just pick this one here.
Now obviously, you can import and save.
If you saw back in here, you can have your own fonts,
where you can download and install your own fonts
and save them on here.
And you can also keep your recent ones there,
so you don't have to keep coming back in each time.
So I've got a font that looks good, How To Edit.
Now, what we'd like to do is to make that text stand out.
We can add a background on it, which is here
to enable that.
And come down here.
We get to choose how much padding
or how much border is on it.
So we can increase that on either side,
on the left and on the right.
And if we come up to color,
just come over here and hit this plus button here,
and that will let you add in your color.
So you can either randomly pick out a color here
that you like the look of,
or you can come up in here to edit,
and you can type in the red, green, and blue numbers
that coordinate with the colors for your branding,
or the hex code up here as well.
So cancel back out of that.
Let's just pick a blue that looks close
to our Primal Video blue,
somewhere around there, and go OK.
So now when we pick up and move this title around,
we are able to move it with the background
and everything intact.
If we hit the tick up here,
then we are back to start making further adjustments.
So we can rotate the text.
We always have a little bit of an angle on it,
probably something like that.
Obviously, you can see there's a heap more adjustments
for shadows and all those sorts of things,
and adding 3D text, you can make it 3D,
and really do some pretty cool creative stuff in here,
even add reflections and those sorts of things to your text,
and even do things like rotate in 3D as well.
It's a really powerful app.
So we'll undo that one.
'Cause obviously, you really wanna create
some sort of consistent branding.
So for us, our titles look similar to this.
We can then come up here to our layers again,
and we can duplicate this layer.
So if we tap on the little edit button here for that layer,
then we've got a copy button.
If we press on that, we then duplicated our layer.
We press on this one here to hide our layers panel again.
You can see we've got two copies of this.
So if I'll pick it up and move it around,
bring it down here,
double-tap to edit our text, Videos Faster,
and OK.
Now in order to make the titles look
a little bit different here,
our branding, we would go down here,
and we would adjust the background.
And we'd probably use a dark gray color.
You can see it'll actually save your presets in here.
So your two most recent colors that you used
will actually be saved there
ready for you to keep using them.
So we'll hit apply on that one, or hit the tick.
Now we come back here,
probably make this one here a bit bigger.
So we come over here to size.
So what we're gonna do is increase the size of it,
but we're also then gonna make the border
of the box a bit smaller.
So we can come back here and we can look at the background,
and we can lower the padding on each side around it.
So just by adjusting these sliders,
we're able to make it look totally different.
And hit the tick when you're done.
And we'll probably also adjust the rotation on this one.
Rotate, let's lower that.
I'll increase that back a little bit, very touchy.
Probably something like that.
Hit the tick.
Come back here, we can pick these up and move them around
to see what they look like.
How To Edit Faster.
So we're getting pretty close.
So to add even more to your thumbnail images,
you've also got the ability,
if we come up here to hit the plus,
to add in things like stickers and shapes.
So if we pick sticker,
you could see we've got a heap of little built-in shapes,
and thumbnails, or clip art, really. (chuckles)
Or you've also got all your emojis
if you wanna bring some of those in, maybe this one.
We can then move it round, scale it up.
Obviously, rotate it and do those sorts of things as well.
You've also got an undo button up here,
which is really handy
if you don't like what you've just done.
So you can remove those back out.
But you can also add in things like shapes.
So you see, we just added a square there.
If we scale this up just to fill in 1/2 of this screen here,
then maybe we'll make it even bigger,
move it over here.
We'll then hit the tick up here to apply that.
We can then come down here to rotate.
We can rotate this maybe this way a bit, bring it down here.
Hit the apply button or the tick.
Now we come back over here to our layers.
We can move our shape down to beneath the two text layers,
hide that layer panel,
and you can start getting some more creative control
over your image as well.
So you can bring in some of these shapes
to help give your thumbnail images a bit more depth
or a bit more creativity, really, in there.
You could even come down here and look at the opacity,
and maybe lower that a little bit
just so you're starting to see some of the background
through there as well.
So another thing you could do
is also bring in any other graphic elements
or logos that apply to the topic
of the video that you're creating.
So in this case, How To Edit Videos Faster,
we could bring in an Adobe Premiere logo
just to have that on there as well.
So we could go import over here.
There's a Premiere logo that we've downloaded.
We'll scale this up so that it fits, and hit the tick.
Now we can move this around and scale it down.
And work out where we'd wanna put it in our thumbnail.
So it could be up here in the top corner, be a bit big.
Or we could bring it down here.
Probably up here.
There you go.
So that's how easy it is to create your thumbnail.
Once you're happy with that,
obviously you can keep on playing with it,
you can come up here to the three little circles
and choose export image.
Now just to save that to your phone or to your gallery,
all you need to do is press Save To Gallery,
or you got presets in here for Facebook,
for Twitter, for Google Plus,
and a heap of other services as well if you wanna use them.
But I'd suggest that because we've already got
the right size, and the right format,
and everything that you're after, just hit Save To Gallery.
That's gonna save that to your phone.
Because it's the free version,
you will have to wait for an ad,
but you can just press the X in the top corner up here.
Now your image is saved,
and it's ready for upload on your YouTube videos.
All right, so now that you've got
your awesome-looking thumbnail,
let's make sure that you're getting the best results
out of that Android camera next time you're filming.
So linked on screen now is a video
running through our top tips for filming on Android,
and there's also a link to download
the free PDF guide to filming amazing videos
just using your Android smartphone.
So you can grab a copy,
and you can follow along next time you're shooting.
I'll see you next time.