So you just shot a photo of yourself but you didn't want to include the
background in your YouTube thumbnail How do you remove the background but keep
the original image? in this video I'll show you how to remove the background
image using Pixelmator to create an attractive thumbnail for your YouTube
video. Here's the original image I shot with my iPhone and here's the edited
image after removing the background using Pixelmator hello my name is Herman
Drost from drostdesigns.com if you want to grow your audience on YouTube and
generate traffic leads and subscribers on autopilot hit the subscribe button or
hit the bell notification icon why use Pixelmator? I chose Pixelmator
because it's quick and easy to use plus you get a free trial for 30 days to see if
you like it. It only costs $29.99 for the Mac version plus you can download an app
from the App Store for your iPhone or iPad for only $4.99 I wanted to find an
alternative to photoshop because for Photoshop you have to pay a monthly fee
and has a steep learning curve here's how to remove the background image using
Pixelmator. To download the free trial of Pixelmator just google Pixelmator then
click free trial and then click download Pixelmator trial now for 30 days. Once
you've downloaded Pixelmator just click on the Pixelmator file and it says try open
existing image I'm going to open this one we're going to click on the
polygonal lasso tool we're going to outline our image started here then you just
click on around your image
we'll speed this up to finish it
and then when you come to the end it'll show finished selection is to click on
that now we're going to refine the selection so go up to edit refine
selection click on the smart refine and we can also adjust the edge detection
here adjust the shape roundness we can do the edge softness so I've got the
bald head here so we'll just want to make sure that that it's taken care of
that looks about right click ok then we'll go up to edit invert selection click
delete. Here is our transparent image I'm going to go up to edit-"deselect all" we are
going to save this file as a transparent image. Go up to share and export and select
PNG click Next save it to the desktop save it as "trans1" click export let's
use this image for our thumbnails. Go up to edit copy you create a new image go to
file new our new image will be 1920 by 1080 and click OK let's expand the
window so I'm just going to click on this green sign to expand the window
give it a background color so I can use the paint tool
let's click inside of there we've got blue but we can choose any color we like
I just click that arrow to deselect go up to edit paste and here's our image
I want to transform that to a smaller image so we'll go up to here click edit
transform and then we can just transform this image to any size we like by just
moving it around. It looks good enough for now just click on the type tool to add
text click to add text call that remove
If I want to make that larger I can just go up to file-edit-transform and we can
make it bigger or if we go to the outside we can even rotate it so we
don't wanna do that just go to Command D to deselect it now we're going to add
another text box click on text put that on top of the hand move this one down
a bit. There's our thumbnail image save it click share export you have the option to
save it as a JPEG, PNG, TIFF, Photoshop PDF or other we're going to save it as a
JPEG. Click JPEG and the quality is going to be best. Click next and we'll save this as
"background1" Now you know how to quickly and easily remove the background
color of an image and create a clickable YouTube thumbnail using Pixelmator. Click
the card icon to download my video upload checklist you'll receive the 10
things you need to do before going live on YouTube
if you want to learn how to grow your audience on YouTube and generate views
and subscribers on autopilot click the subscribe button below and check out the
related videos I'll see you in the next video