How to Make YouTube Thumbnails in Canva

1. Introduction: Hello everyone and welcome to this course on how to create better YouTube thumbnails with Canva for free. I'm a YouTuber myself, and I use Canvas for all of my thumbnails on each and every one of my channels. As you may know, some nos aside from the title of your video, are one of the most important things you need to take care of. Many years ago, I didn't know this. And as you can see, this is my first thumbnail for my first YouTube video. And what you can see here is a thumbnail for one of my latest videos. So the difference is quite noticeable. And I created this thumbnail with gamba for free in less than five minutes. In this course, you're going to learn how to create different types of thumbnails with different styles. And we're going to show you how to create a thumbnail using Canvas templates and also how to make a thumbnail completely from scratch using your own images. So as always, if you're interested, please feel free to join the course and I'll see you on the other side. 2. Getting Started: First we need to open up canva.com and decide how we're going to create our thumbnail. So there's two different options. We can come up here and type YouTube thumbnail and select this option. And this is going to load up Canvas templates so we can choose one of these templates and edit them. Or we can also go back. And we can come down here and search for YouTube thumbnail. As you can see, when we hover our mouse over it, it says Create blank. So if we click on it, it's going to create a blank thumbnail. So if you want to design your thumb them from scratch, you choose this option. I'm going to show you both ways, but first, we're going to start with a template version. So now let's move on to the first lesson and create our first thumbnail. 3. Product Review Thumbnail: So as you can see here, we have many different templates. Every single template that has this little golden crown here means you need the Canva pro, but we're going to make them for free. So either we create a blank YouTube thumbnail, or we come here to the left column and we scroll down where it says free and we have to check free. Now let's imagine like me, you have a tech channel and you want to review a product and you want to create a YouTube thumbnail for that product. So I'm going to scroll down until I see one that I like. Let's say this one for example. And you would think a fitness, somebody who has nothing to do with a product review thumbnail. But the beauty of Canva is that you can't edit and change almost everything. So let's select this one. And this is how it looks right off the bat. Now let's imagine we just received the latest Samsung smartphone. So we're going to open up Google images and we're going to search for our model. And we're going to find an image that would like. So for example, this one here. I always encourage people to use their own images and I'm going to show you that on another lesson for a different type of thumbnail. But for the sake of this tutorial, let's use this image as an example. So we're going to right-click. And the copy image. Now we're going to do is on our keyboard, hit Control V or Command V. If you're using a Mac. And we're going to paste our image here. And this looks very weird, but we're going to select the background, which is this part here. And we're going to erase it. We're going to delete it. So we click there. And now there's a blank space. So what we can do is click on this image, place it here, and then make it bigger until it fits in. Like the image that was previously there. And we're going to bring this down here. And it will look like this. But what we have to do is simply right-click on the image and send to back. So we click there. And now as you're gonna see, this is already part of the background, like the image that we had before. This was the original image, so we just swapped the picture of the lady with the picture of the product we're going to review. Now, we need to change this. You can place your YouTube logo here. We're going to double-click on the text and we're going to type the model of the phone. But it's a bit too big. So we're going to come here and make this smaller until it fits in one line. We're going to move this up a bit. And we're going to change this text and we're going to psi per review. And to keep things exactly the same, we're going to remember the font size. So 69.2, I'm going to come here and double-click. And again, we're going to bring it down to 69.2. If you sink this square is the wig. You can always click on it and make it smaller or make it bigger. That's up to you. But now let's say we want to change the color. I do recommend keeping a color pattern that way people can associate these type of thumbnails to your channel. So we're going to click here, not inside the text, but on the rectangle itself. And up here to the left, we have color. So if we click on it, this comes up. So you can change the whole color of this rectangle here. So let's say we want a light blue. And now this is the color we're going to use. And if we want to change this one, we're going to do the same thing and we come up here and document colors, we can choose the same one as before. If you look closely down here, it says change all. What this is going to do if we click on it is change the color of this element as well. That way you can change the color of each and every one of these elements quicker. But let's say you don't like having three different colors here. So we're going to click here, come up here once again, and simply change one by one by clicking here. And now we have our thumbnail with the colors that we want and the image that we want. And obviously you can also change this part here. If you don't like black, you can click on it. Come up here and change the color once again, let's say you like orange for example. If you made a mistake and you want to go back, you can always come up here to undo, or you can come here to read. And that's a very quick and easy way to make an awesome product review some new. And now let's move on to the next lesson where we're going to learn how to make a thumbnail for a full HD video. 4. Food Channel Thumbnail: We're going to come up here once again, and we're going to type YouTube thumbnail, and we click here. Once again, we're going to look for our free templates. We just have to scroll down once again and look for a template that we like. So we can use this one, for example, which is R0. Before this lesson, we're going to use this one here because we already have a food image here though we click on this thumbnail. But let's say instead of this dish here, we want to use a pizza image. And as I said, it's better if you use your own images, but if you don't have any, you can use rule. So let's fire up Google images once again. And we're going to type in pizza. And we're going to search for an image that we like. Let's say, I like this one here. I'm going to right-click Copy Image. I'm going to go back to Canva. And once again, we're going to hit Command V or Control V on our keyboard. So once again, all we have to do is erase this background here. So we're going to click on it and we come to the trashcan and we delete. And now we're going to grab this image. We're going to move it here. And we're gonna make it bigger. And we're going to bring this down. And now we have our pizza image as part of the background. But obviously this doesn't have anything to do with this picture. So we just double-click and we're going to change the title. Instead of Asian food lover, we're going to say beta over. And we're going to double-click here as well. And we're going to type, instead of looking for an adventure, looking for the best beta. And I'm going to change this text as well. We double-click. And let's type in five easy beta recipes and we could leave it like that, but we can also change the font. So let's double-click here and select the whole text. And if we come up here to the left, we can change the text. That's a, this one or this one. These small golden crowns are just for Canva pro users, so people that pay a monthly subscription, but we're going to use Free Fonts. Every single font that doesn't have the crown is free and we can select any type of Fanta we want. And as always, you can change the size as well. And we can make it bold, and we can underline it. And now let's say I want to change this one here, the color, instead of this color, we're going to use peach. And we can leave it like that or we can also change the background. We click on color and we change it once again. Let's say this time we want magenta. But now let's say we don't like this image here. If I want to delete this, I just click on it. Come here, Delete. And now that's gone. And I can also erase this little thing here. So I click on it, delete. And it says delete element or delete group. If we select the league group is going to erase this thing and the text, and we don't want that. So we're just going to click on delete element. And as you can see now it looks much better in order to say, you don't want this orange line, we're going to click on it. And once again, we're going to come up here to color. And we're going to change the magenta as well. The great thing about Canva is that it also has many different things you can add to your thumbnail, not just images or text. So if we come here to the left where it says elements and we click on it, you also have a search bar. So let's say I want to search for pizza, and I click on pizza. We can use many of these elements for free. So I can also click here. And now I have a pizza drawing and I can make it smaller and I can place it anywhere that I want. And I can do that with almost anything. So let's say I want to look for tomato for example. All of these come up. I have to look for the ones that are free. Let's say this one here. And once again, I can make it smaller. And I can drag here. And now I have a tomato and a pizza slice that weren't there before. And I think it looks a bit better. And that's a very easy way to make a food thumbnail using Canvas templates and less than five minutes. Now we can move on to a different type of thumbnail. In this case, I'm going to show you how to create a gaming thumbnail. And after that, we're going to learn how to create a thumbnail completely from scratch. So let's move on. 5. Gaming Thumbnail: I know. I know not everyone isn't a gaming, but I'm sure you can still grab some useful ideas with this lesson. So as always, let's come here to the left, select free, and look for some kind of gaming thumbnail or something that catches our attention. So this could be one of them, but we're going to choose this one for this example. So we click on it. We're just going to change the text. So we double-click on it. And that's a best. Next box games. And we're going to double-click here. And let's say of 1021. Let's erase this. So we select it. And we come here to the trashcan. And now let's say we want to change the color of the smiley face, the arrow, and this star and circle. So all we're gonna do is select one of them. Come up here to the left and change the color. I like, like blue. So we're going to select light blue. And as you can see down here, it says change all. So we're going to change all. And now the smiley, the arrow, and these two elements here have the same color. And once again, we could leave it like that or we could change the color of the background if we want to. So if we click on the background and we come up here, we can change it to purple. And if we don't like it, as always, we can come up here and undo or redo. And I like purple. So that's a change All. And now we're going to change these as well. So I'm going to select this one. I'm gonna come up here to color. And I'm going to choose violet. And I'm going to leave it like that. If you don't want some of the elements of this thumbnail, you can delete them. So if I don't like the Smiley face, I can delete it as always. And I can delete this here as well. And if I don't like the arrow, I can delete it as well. And now, like before, we're going to search through the elements of Campbell. And that's right, gaming for example. And now we have many different icons and images that we can load onto our background. So we just scroll down and search for something that catches our attention. And I like this one here. I'm going to make it smaller and I'm going to bring it here. And of course, you could also erase this one and load your channel logo and use that instead. Now let's move on to the next lesson where you're going to learn how to create a thumbnail from scratch using a blank template and uploading your own images. 6. Awesome Thumbnail From Zero: Now we're going to create our thumbnail from scratch using our own images. So let's go down here and look for YouTube thumbnail, create length. And this is our blank thumbnail, obviously. And what I'm gonna do now is upload one of my own images, this image here, but I want to remove the background. So I'm going to show you a website where you can do that for free. And that's Remove BG.com. This one here. No, you just have to click here, upload image. You search for your image. In my case, this one. And as you can see, this website does a pretty good job. So I want to edit this part here. I'm going to click Edit, erase. And I can change the brush size, make it bigger or smaller. And I'm going to slowly try to erase this carefully. It's not going to be perfect, but better than nothing. And it's a free tool. So that's nice. If I make a mistake, I can always come here and undo the previous step. And let's say this looks fine. So I'm going to download my image. I'm going to save it on my computer. Now. I can go back to Canva. And here to the left below elements we have uploads. And as you can see, I already had this image here, but I'm going to upload it once again so you can see the process. We just have to click Upload Media. And we have the image here open. We wait for Canva will upload. And once it's done, we just have to click on it. And it loads up here on our blank template. Now I'm going to move myself to the left. And I'm going to make myself bigger. And now let's say I'm making this thumbnail for a marketing and growth YouTube channel. I'm going to change the background a bit. I'm going to change the color. Let's say this color for example, or this one here. And then I'm going to add some text here. And we're going to search for some texts that we like. But you can scroll down and there's thousands of them. So let's say for example, I want to use this 1 first. I'm going to type 0 to 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 subscribers. And I'm going to make it a bit smaller. I'm going to move it here. And I'm going to change the color of the font to white. And now let's try this text here. And we're going to double-click on free. And we're gonna change the text and we're going to say it on YouTube. We're gonna make it a bit smaller as well. And now I'm gonna go back here to the Elements tab, and I'm going to look for a YouTube icon. So I'm gonna type youtube. And we have some that are paid and some that are free. So this one is okay. I'm gonna make it a bit smaller. And I'm going to place it in here. And this would be one example. But now let's say you're not a big fan of the plain background. So we're going to change it using Google images once again, as always, if you have your own image, that will be better. But if you don't, you can use Google images. And I'm going to show you how we're going to blur the background to give it a different touch. Can look for gaming desktop. And I'll go look for a colorful background like this one for example. Copy image. I'm going to select the background, delete it, and now Control V or Command V on your keyboard as always. And we're going to right-click and send to back. We're going to make it bigger. And now we're going to blur the background that way. We're going to take advantage of the light and the color, but it won't be distracting. So we're going to come up here to Edit Image and where it says adjust. And we're going to look for blur. And we're going to bring it up like so. And now we have a very nice-looking background. And once again, let's say you don't like this font or we can change the whole type of text. So we come back here to text. And instead of this one, we can use this one. So we're going to erase this tone here. And we're going to write down once again, 0 to 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 subs. And we're going to make it smaller. I'm going to change the size. Let's make it a bit bigger. Instead of 80, let's say 96. Or even a bit bigger, 120. We're going to move over here. And now we're going to bring this up a bit. And this one as well. Now we're going to add the last touch. So I'm going to go back to myself, edit image. And I'm going to come here to shadows. And I'm going to add some drop shadow. And as you can see now there's a black shadow, but I can also change the color. I can come here to this icon and I click on C Controls. And I'm going to come down here to color. And I'm going to scroll down and I'm going to change the color of the shadow to yellow. And I'm going to Apply. And now I have a nice-looking shadow on my image. So this would be the end result, and that's the process I follow for each and every one of my videos in less than 10 minutes, you can create a pretty epic thumbnail. And now let's move on to the last lesson. Are you going to learn how to create a course thumbnail that you can use both on YouTube or even on Skillshare. 7. Online Course Thumbnail: As you can see here, this is a previous design I made with Canva for one of my other Skillshare courses. So once again, we're going to come here to YouTube, thumbnail, create length. And we're going to search for a template. The golden crown means there are only four Canva pro users, but we're going to use one of the free templates. So for example, this one here. And we could leave it like that if you want to use this, but we can change the color. Now let's say you're finished and you want to download this image or any other of the thumbnails, we just click Download and we choose the type of file, in my case, PNG, because it's the highest quality. But if you don't like this background, we can change it as always. So we click on it. We deleted, and we can come here to the left column once again, hit background. And we have different surfaces that we can choose. But in my case, want to look for an element, a computer. And these show up. So I could use this image here, for example. And now we make it bigger. And I could leave it like that. And this would be a perfect example of an HTML Crash Course. So if you're uploading courses to Skillshare or other courses to YouTube, you can use Canvas as well. And this would be our final thumbnail. 8. Other Tutorials: Thank you very much for joining the course. And as always, you can check my profile and subscribe if you wanna see more upcoming courses. I hope you found this course useful and I'll see you in the next one.