Having a great eye-catching thumbnail is one of the most important parts of making a YouTube
video.
But most people either don't care.
They don't know how, or they're so tired when it comes time to upload their YouTube video,
they just use the default one that YouTube comes up with, which is no good.
So in today's video, I'm going to teach you my step-by-step process on how to make a great
eye-catching thumbnail that gets more clicks and more views.
Hey guys, my name is Morgan and I am a video strategist that teaches content, creators,
entrepreneurs, and small businesses, how to grow their businesses using YouTube.
And now that I have this process nailed down, I can really whip out a thumbnail pretty quickly.
So I'm excited to share this with you because so many of you asked for this.
So for my photos, there are really two main components.
There is the photo of me, and then there is the text and sometimes images better there
to further gain interest and let someone know what the topic of the video is about.
So the first step that I do is I take my thumbnail photo.
Now for me, I always like to have a photo of me in my thumbnail.
I am one teaching the content and all of my videos and people are really drawn to faces.
And so if you are the star of your YouTube videos, you may want to consider having a
photo of you in the YouTube video.
And I usually do this before I shoot my YouTube video.
I always do a test shot where I'm double checking that I'm in frame.
And while I am there doing this test footage, I will just take some thumbnail photos to
make sure that I get this out of the way.
So I do not forget, and this has just become a part of my YouTube routine.
So I don't forget about it because there would be many times that I'd be editing my YouTube
video and it came time to make the thumbnail.
And I realized I didn't have an image or a photo of me to go for a thumbnail.
And so I always do it first.
I get it out of the way, because it's really, really painful.
When you have to go through all of your raw footage to try to find a still frame where
your mouth, isn't open and you're not making a weird face, you're not blurry.
And that can be really, really time consuming to do after the fact.
So I definitely recommend taking a photo and do that first thing.
So that way it is out of the way, because sometimes at the end of your YouTube video,
when you're done recording, for me, it takes anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes.
And I can be really exhausted by the end of my YouTube recording session.
And I'll just forget about it.
I'm so excited to be done and turn off the camera that I forgot to take a photo.
So when it comes to having a photo of your face, you really want to have something that
is dynamic and expressive.
Yeah.
It's great to have a nice photo of you smiling.
You will find that you have more engagement if you are showing some sort of emotion in
your thumbnail.
So I usually, and people call me out for this, but I sometimes have my mouth open and I'm
pointing at something.
Usually I'll be pointing at the text.
Or I'll be surprised, or I'll be angry or confused, whatever, any sort of emotion that
could get someone to stop and think, huh, I wonder why she's making that face.
And then hopefully they'll look at the other elements of your thumbnail and then they will
click and watch your video.
So I'm always making sure that I have some sort of over-the-top expression, because it
really does work to help with your click-through rate to get more clicks.
Now, one thing you'll notice for all of my thumbnails is that I am always sitting on
the right side of the frame and my text is always on the left side of the frame.
And there is a reason why I do that.
That is because typically YouTube is going to have the timestamp of your video in the
bottom right hand corner.
So, and depending on what someone is watching it on, whether it's on mobile or it's on desktop,
that timestamp can take up a pretty big portion of your thumbnail.
So for that reason, I always make sure that my text is on the left side and I am on the
right side.
So when I'm taking my photos, I make sure that I'm always pointing to the left because
I know that I'm going to be having texts there.
If I point to the right, I'll probably have to swap the photo.
But for me, I'm always looking to the left.
I'm always pointing to the left.
I'm always directing my hands and my movement toward the text because that's going to hopefully
be the next thing that grabs people's attention and they click on the thumbnail.
All right.
So here I am at my computer and I have uploaded the footage.
And the very first thing that I went and did is I took screenshots from the video, or if
you've already taken individual shots, you'll need to go and pull those up and then figure
out which one would be the best for your YouTube video.
And I have about four or five really good poses that I like.
So now I'm just going to scroll through them and see which one is the best.
So here are okay.
So there were four.
So I'm actually gonna use this one, even though there's still a little teeny bit of blurriness.
That's totally okay.
I just like how I look in this one.
And I also like that there's a lot of space over here that I can use for when I'm putting
the text over my image.
So the next thing that I'm going to do for this image is that I'm going to upload it
to Lightroom.
So I use the Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes Photoshop, illustrator, Lightroom, Adobe Premiere
Pro for all of my editing needs, but I do it on desktop and I also do it on my phone.
So the first step after I've picked my photo is I'm then going to take this photo and I'm
going to put it in Lightroom and apply a preset.
This is a preset that I apply to all of my photos.
It just lightens and brightens.
And it's a good starting place.
Now, again, you don't have to use Lightroom.
You can use any photo editing software that you like, but this is the one that I use because
it's my process.
And just for kicks and giggles, I'm going to do it on my phone because there's another
program I like to use on my phone as well.
So I'm just going to go ahead and share this using Airdrop.
And there you go.
The image has appeared on my phone.
So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to open up Lightroom and you can see, there are
quite a few of different images on here because I really do like to use this on my phone.
So first I'm going to import my photo from camera roll.
Then I'm going to scroll over here to the presets and then use my preset.
And I, I basically like how that is showing up.
Now, if it was, I wanted it to be lighter or darker, I could come over here to the light
tab and I could bump up the exposure more or less, but it was that 30.
Okay.
So you can see right here, if you tap and hold the photo that shows you the before and
after.
So it's not a huge difference, but it's just enough that I like how light and bright it
is.
So I like this and I'm really not going to do any other changes.
Again, this preset for the most part is just one and done.
And then I export it to my kid camera roll.
So what I ended up doing is I ended up going into face tune.
So I went ahead and I uploaded this to face tune.
This is actually face tune 1.0, it's the free version because I'm already paying for Photoshop.
And I can do a lot of this in Photoshop, but I like showing you guys how to do this in
face tune, because I know a lot of people don't have access to Photoshop.
And so I'm showing you some free tools that you can use.
Now with Lightroom, you can download and use a free version of Lightroom on your phone
and have some basic functionality which will basically get the job done.
So that is free.
And then this version of Facetune is free.
Now the new version of phase two, and I think face tomb 2.0, that one you actually do have
to pay a monthly subscription for.
And it actually has better features.
Like you can do one touch and it will do some of these things that I'm going to show you.
Okay.
But I'm a cheapo when it comes to that, I don't want to pay for another photo editing
program.
So I do this.
All right.
So the very first thing that I do is I go here to this whiten button.
And basically what I'm going to do is I'm going to whiten my teeth and my eyes, because
I just want those to stand out a little bit more, especially the eyes because the eyes
are really one of the first things that people will look at.
And we, as humans are drawn to other humans and we look at people's eyes.
So I'm just going to go here and just do one swipe of my teeth, upper and bottom, and then
do the whites of my eyes.
You don't want to go too crazy with this.
Basically.
I just whitened them just a tad.
So that way they pop a little more.
You can hit this arrow button to go back, to see what it would look like before and
after.
And again, it just really, really is subtle, but I like it.
So then the next thing that I do is I hit this details tab.
And what I do is I go and since people are looking at the eyes and they're focusing on
the eyes, I want the eyes to really stand out.
So I just go on my eyelash line just once or twice.
And I just darken that up.
The detail is going to make those details pop.
So I just kind of darken that up.
Sometimes I'll do the eyelash, but I won't do any more than that.
Usually I won't go over my teeth or different things because I really only want the details
of the eyes to pop.
So this one, I just want like a little bit more right there.
And sometimes I will just tap the Iris, the black part of the Iris, and just make that
pop a little more and you can see how now it looks like I have darker eyeliner basically
because it kind of got washed out in the camera.
So now my eyes really pop and that's good because people do focus on that.
And even though the thumbnail is just going to be really, really small for most people,
when they're looking at it on a computer or a phone, I think these little teeny things,
things do make a difference.
So I hit, okay.
And I really don't spend too much time resurfacing my skin.
I think for the most part, it's fine.
You can hit the smooth button and there's kind of a little thing on my chin.
And so I just kind of smooth that out and you can really get it the handed with the
smoothing tool and do it all over your entire face.
And it just looks really, really fake.
And I've learned that I've gotten a little too heavy handed on that.
So I really don't use it unless there's something that I just really need to smooth out.
Yeah.
But then again, if you have a blemish or whatnot, you can use this patch tool and it will patch
that and fix that for you.
So the next step that I'm going to do is D focus.
And I actually got this tip from Cathrin Manning.
She's another YouTube content creator.
And she did a video where she taught her thumbnail process and she does use face tune.
And so that's actually why I started moving into here because I can't do this.
Defocus in Photoshop.
But since I'm already in here, kind of doing these other things, I just love how quick
and easy face tune makes it versus Photoshop like brightening the eyes and some of the
details it's, it's easy, but I don't know.
It's just even easier when I do it in here.
So that's why I love this.
And you have to be really careful that you don't get too close to you, your hair, your
arm, because if you are zoomed into close or you touch too closely, then it's going
to blur you out and you don't want that.
You want a stark contrast between you and the background.
So that basically is all the pieces that I do in Facetune.
So then I'm going to take this export button.
I'm going to save to my camera roll.
You can see right here, this is the initial untouched photo.
This is with the filter that I added in Lightroom.
And then this is with the blurred background that I did in Facetune and then some of the
other little tweaks.
All right.
So here is the photo and I'm going to go ahead and import this into Photoshop.
I'm just going to click and drag it right there.
Now, if you don't have Photoshop, you can do this in Canva.
Canva is basically a free version of Photoshop that is web based and you just sign up and
you can use a free program there.
So here's my photo.
And again, you can do this in Facetune with the whiten feature, but I just really like
it better here.
I use the Dodge tool and basically what it does is it just lightens everything.
So it's the same thing as the whiten feature.
And I just click on it and I really like to whiten the background and make it just so
much brighter.
All right.
So that is the finished image.
I'm pretty happy with it and I think it looks great.
So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to open up my Photoshop template for my thumbnails,
this template I use every single time I use the same colors on my thumbnails.
I more or less use the same text and graphics.
So I'm just going to open it up and import this photo into there.
So I always save the Photoshop file for any of the different thumbnails that I'm making,
but I have one, right that is called Morgan Stradling at YouTube thumbnail.
And I just open it up and basically it has my texts already there.
There is a default photo, just so I can kind of just have one there, but I have it hidden
in the template.
And I have a few other elements that I commonly use in my YouTube videos.
And I just have those layers hidden.
So that way I don't have to import them every single time.
They're always there in case I need them.
So like this YouTube one that one's always defaulted because a lot of my content is about
YouTube and how to use YouTube so that one's always there because typically I am going
to use that in my photo.
So the very first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to import my photo.
So I click and drag it and I want this to be the bottom most layer.
And then I just position it where I'm on the right side.
And I'm taking up probably a third to half of the thumbnail photo.
Now this one's perfect because I'm not too big.
I'm just going to hit Apple T, which is transformed.
And that allows me to make it a little bit bigger.
So I'm filling a little bit more space.
So I'm just moving me to the edge.
And I really like that right there.
So then you can see that right here, the photo wasn't big enough to cover this part of the
template.
So I'm just going to use the stamp tool, which is S and I'm just is going to stamp or clone
this part of the wall.
You can just see that I extended the sight of the image and it looks pretty seamless.
And this is just dummy text that I had from a previous thumbnail that I did.
It can just be jibberish, but the fact that it's here, it's all ready to go.
I just have to change the text and move it around, makes this process super easy.
And it makes creating thumbnails very, very quick.
So for texts, you don't want it to be the exact text that you're going to be using for
your title.
You want to use a different choice of words or say it in a different way, or have some
sort of call out that will get people's attention.
And also you don't want the text to be too long.
A big mistake that I see new YouTube is making is that they have just this wall of text in
their thumbnails.
And when it's down to the size of a postage stamp, it's so hard to read.
You can't read any of it.
So I like to really have two to five words, and that is max, because again, people are
just going to look at this very quickly and make a decision whether they want to watch
your video or not.
And so you really want to have the smallest amount of text possible, so they can just
see it really quickly and get an idea of what your video's about and then click.
So this is actually for an imaginary video, but let's say that it was for this thumbnail
video.
So I'm teaching you how to create thumbnails.
So my title most likely is going to be how to create custom thumbnails for YouTube.
And if I put how to create custom thumbnails for YouTube, that would be an eyesore that
would just be too much text.
It would be hard to read all of that at a quick glance.
So that is a no go.
So in my video, I just think about, okay, what's something that would get people's attention.
And I'm basically teaching you my fast step-by-step way to create thumbnails.
So I could do something like step-by-step thumbnails or thumbnails fast, or create thumbnails
fast.
So I'm going to play around with different variations of the text to see what I like
best.
Okay.
So I really like this.
I'm just going to put, create custom thumbnails because the keywords that I'm gonna be searching
for are custom thumbnails for people who are beginners, who are just learning to make these
thumbnails themselves for their channel.
All right.
So I'm just going to leave it at that.
And I do have this little YouTube logo here, so I'm just going to resize this and find
a good place to put it, and then I think I'm gonna be done.
All right.
So I move the text around a little bit more and I ended up just putting the image right
here.
If I put it over here, it just kind of gets in the way.
And so I'm just gonna put it right here.
And so that way you look at me and you see this YouTube banner, and then you read the
text and it says, create custom thumbnails.
So it's nothing fancy.
It's pretty simple.
This process.
The last thing that I do need to do is I just need to save this and make sure that I'm not
saving it as a Photoshop file, but to save it as a JPEG.
So I'm actually gonna do a Save As change the format to JPEG, and then name it, "how
to create custom thumbnails for YouTube".
And then I'm going to save it into the thumbnail folder that I have, and it's going to be in
the final thumbnails.
So after I save that boom, there it is.
There's my final thumbnail that I can then upload it to my YouTube video.
It's so much better prettier and more engaging than the standard three options that YouTube
gives you, that it just pulls from your video.
And that is the process that I use.
Obviously I do use quite a bit of software when doing this, but it's what works for me.
And you can absolutely do all of this.
Add these banners at the text, add the photo in Canva.
I just don't use Canva because I have Photoshop.
But if you would like me to do how to create a thumbnail, this whole entire process using
Canva, I will absolutely do that for you.
Just let me know in the comments below.
All right.
So that is my step-by-step process of how I create my thumbnails for my YouTube videos.
If you found this helpful, give it a like, and let me know in the comments below what
you found the most informative or interesting.
What do I do differently that you're going to start incorporating in your videos?
And of course, be sure to subscribe, to join the tribe.
I share tips every week on how to grow and build a YouTube channel.
That is all that I have for today.
And I'll see you next time.
Okay.
So that is the, so those are the first, so those are things to look out for when you
were record....*ahem*