Transcripts
1. 1 Intro: What's up, everyone?
My name's Northern. I'm a graphic designer
and in this course, I will show you how
to make eye-catching YouTube thumbnails and walk you through the whole
process of making a YouTube thumbnail
in Photoshop. Why our thumbnail so crucial
when it comes to YouTube. Wealth for our first, they
help you get more views. Thumbnails are usually the
first thing potential abuse. Crafting a great and
attractive thumbnail can catch your attention and help make them interested in
what your video. Therefore, getting a
better click-through rate. On top of this, having a well-designed thumbnail
can add to your brand of 40, making people able to recognize your videos upon just seeing
your thumbnail style. In this course, I'm gonna show you how to create a project, cut people or
objects from images, how to use Layer Styles, how to make attractive
topography, how to add effects, how to do final touches
or color corrections, and how to export your
thumbnail for YouTube.
2. 2 How To Create Project: So once you open Photoshop, you'll agree with this. So first of all, it is an order to create a
project or an art board. You're just going to
press on Create New. Once you are press on
that and you will be greeted with the
New Document panel. So the size of a
YouTube thumbnail is should be 1280 by
720 or something. Yeah. So the size of the
YouTube thumbnail should be 1280 or 720, and it should be landscape, and it should be pixels. If it's an interests, just
paint it back to pixels. Resolution says it just
sort of preference, but I like to use the
100 pixel by inch. We'll just leave it
at their RGB classes. We're using a digitally, we were to use it
to print stuff. We would use CMYK, CMYK color, but in this
case we're just using RGB. Once. We're finished with that, we're just going
to press Create. Once you're done with
creating your project, you will be met
with this embryo. Continue on in the later videos.
3. 3 Graphics Pack: So little off topic here, but there are these
things called graphic packs and you can
download them off the internet. And what he's graphic
packs have is they have these images you can
use in your thumbnails. You often see them in
most YouTube thumbnails. And I'm gonna be uploading
this particular file in the project and resources section in
Skillshare, I think. Yeah, I'm gonna be
uploading it on them and honestly think
they are very useful. I use this particular one in tens and thousands
of them online. You can find them. But I'm just going to upload
this one only because I find it really
useful and I use it quite a lot when it comes
to designing thumbnail. So what this graphic pack has, if you want to open
it and just go to File and then press
Open and then go to where you have
that file stored and open it from there
and you will be greeted with the
same thing here. In this file pack. It has arrows, can be
pointing at something. It has brush lights. He suggests things you put at
the borders of your videos. I mean, I mean, it's thumbnail
with my bad and emojis. These are just trying
to express emotions. Emotions. I think that is a
PDU cool explosion nowadays. You can use this
for your videos, but I don't really use them, mostly flares and these
ones I use a lot. Just going to put
them at the end or in the middle somewhere that
makes it attractive. Lights I find these
are very useful, especially when it comes
to gaming. Thumbnails. Last but not least particles. Rarely do I use them, but
these are really useful. So yeah, that's about it. About this thumbnail GFS pack will be moving on to the
real project later on. So I hope to see you
guys in the next video.
4. 4 How To Cut Subject From Image: What's up, guys, In this video, we're not gonna do much yet. We just got to take an
image and cut that person from the image and add a stroke
around him in this video. So yeah, that's what we're
gonna do in this video. So first of all, for us to import our open our image file,
there's two ways. The first one is just
clicking File and open. The second way is clicking Control O or Command
O of your unmasks. So we're just going to
find it real quick. I'm gonna have this listed in the Projects and Resources
section of Skillshare. I found this image on Unsplash. I believe it's a
website boil off. Stock free stock photos. So yeah, it's it's
a really good site. I recommend it here, really high resolution
and they're free. So once we have it, so this image is way too big for what
you're working with. So first click on, stick on the image,
press Control T. You're going to be met
with these trends. The transform box for our
YouTube, make it smaller. We just press Alt and then
just drag it in. Just Alt. Control Z, you real quick.
But if we didn't press Alt and we just did, this is just going
to go back to that. And so honestly just press Alt and then it's gonna be just ways he is gonna go to the middle. And also how you're supposed to zoom in
and zoom out in this just going to press Alt while
scrolling on the mouse. So this is how you scroll,
zoom in and zoom out. Yes, so we've got our image, which royalty, and we can
move it and scale it around. Just going to sketch
my liking real quick. Yeah, I think this
is good enough. Here comes the fun
part of actually cutting this guy
from the image sell. On Photoshop. There are quite a
few ways you can cut objects or
people from images. The easiest one,
in my opinion is honestly the Quick
Selection Tool here. So let's get a quick method that you just hover over this guy. And it does like the
selecting for us. It's not really accurate, but just gets a good
job done quickly. So it's going to do that. Honestly. If the selection part goes outside of the person
we're trying to cut. What we can do is press
Alt and then we just, it just deletes are subtracts
that selection part. So I'm just going to press Alt
and I'm just going to move around and get rid of the part. I didn't want to be selected. Here. I actually wanted one who's
close to these elected more. Maybe duck this part. So I'm just going to zoom in. That'll give me a
little bit more. And then should I
and I think I like, do you notice missing my bad? How you make the brush
smaller or bigger is by pressing Control Alt and then just moving your mouse
in it just as it does this. And if you're on Mac,
it's Command and Alt. And you can do this as well. Once we do that again and then just press it to
delete the spotted a 1.5. There you have it. A
selection of the subject. We're just going to go
back to the move tool. Then we go on that layer
and we press Control J. What it does is it duplicates
the selection that I made. So now there's this
extra guy here. Yes. So why do we
need to do this? Because I want to make a selection of them so
I can make a stroke that goes around because he
didn't if we didn't cut him, we couldn't make a stroke
around him because he stuck with us
in the same image. So for us to make him
have a stroke around him, just going to double-click,
double-click. In the Layer Styles optimist
just going to pop up. So yeah, I mean, Australia's Stroke option is here and we can just
adjust it to her liking. Just put it at white. My bad really going to change the position option
from inside to outside. So yes, some thumbnails
looked like this, but honestly, I don't like it. So I like to make a
glowing stroke cellphone that we're going to
just go to Outer Glow. For this, I'm feeling
a little orange. So let's go with orange. We go with orange and we
gonna change normally, do the blending mode to normal. Let's mess around. Don't be afraid to just
methodologies as well. So yeah, so I'm not really
liking it as it is right now. Just looks like a normal stroke. So just change the blending mode from normal to Linear Dodge. Add what it does, just makes it look
more cool, I guess. So, yeah. You can see it's
like glowing and stroke is calling
allowing him around him. So it really catches
the viewer's eye. So maybe we should make it
glowing background around him. I think we could do that. Yeah, We're gonna go
to the layer below it and press the
New Layer button. Creates a new layer for us. So we can just go
to the brush tool. Make sure we switch to white. Then we're just going to maybe not do much. It'd
be a little bit. Then we can change
the, it will lower. So it's not that noticeable, but it just looks nice. There you have it. How you cut objects or a
subject from an image easily. And how to put a
stroke around him. There you have it.
We're going to go on to other stuff in other videos. And I'll see you later.
5. 5 How To Add Text: What's up, guys? In this video, we're just going to make the text in the
thumbnail. So yeah. So in order to do
that, we're just gonna go to the Text tool, which is the letter T over here. We're just going to put it down. And then we can adjust the
size up here by making late, maybe even making a
little bit bigger. That's no, not to
my liking, is 60. I think that's enough. Then this particular thumbnail, it's gonna be like
a family on a video that says how much
money I made up myself. First of all, we're just
gonna make some random amount of like a random
amount of money. We will see, you
will see why later. But if we just add in some
random numbers, commit text. First of all, the text is
really, really not noticeable. Oh, by the way, it's good. It's good practice to just lock your background
layer so it doesn't affect your code from the current layers
you're working with it. So yeah, Once we got the texts, Control T and then we
can make it figure. Yeah, I'm not really dig
into text right now. So maybe we can
just get something along the lines
of truth for dad. We just gonna go want
to change the texts. We can just go on obviously for onto the text itself and
then change it manually. But for me I like to go use
the characteristic function. So go to Window, go to Windows. And then fine, I
mean characters. And this will pop
up and press on it. We can change the font, so forth for the fondly I want, I'm just going to scoot fra you can download hundreds
of fonts online. So yeah, just go on
Google and search for a font that you'd
like for this indice. This case, I'm just going to use food for us and I like it. It's like it very
much, It's very nice. Yeah, but I've changed the font, but I can barely see it. So that's where we use, which he called them
Layer, Layer Styles. Yeah. So we can
make the text pop up and very noticeable
and catch light. Catches like people attention. So first of all,
we're just going to double-click on the layer. Once we double-click, which is, first of all, let's
add a gradient. So let's go to gradient overlay. Most of the time you're
done, you're boned. P sets for new users should have just stuck with
light the first few rows. So we're just going
to work quickly. So yeah, and so the
first color here, I'm going to make it
like a red, orange. Orange is usually a very, normally a very popular like
text color for thumbnail. So something like this. Yeah, it looks nice. It will tell us. Maybe make this a little later. I think that's really nice. Okay. Once we got the okay
now it's barely yeah. Maybe maybe we should
turn it up a little bit. I mean, this part is
up to your preference. I'm just doing this
based on my opinion, my preferences on how it looks. But for you guys, so you
can use any color you want. So yes, once we
add the gradient, we've just going
to add a stroke. Maybe a black color, so it's soiled like contrasts. It maybe not actually. How about retried in the globe? Yeah, that's popular nowadays. We're just gonna shouldn't
be shouldn't be overly. Yeah, it should be overly. And then we're just going
to be opacity a little bit. So you can see it
glows in a middle, lowest along the lines of he didn't have it.
It looks like this. Have it it looks a little
like really clean. After that, we're just
gonna do a drop shadow. It's starting to
look to get enough. Maybe turn it up a little bit. That's very nice. Maybe not too much. Red. One thing I forgot to
ask, the ball tight. We're just going
to press on this pressed Text tool and then just add the
dollar sign onto it. That's nice. Tip of advice when
creating thumbnails. Want to try to, try to take
advantage of this panel called Let's see if I can
find it. Wasn't called. The characters got enough. Navigator, yeah,
navigate itself. We can just move
this panel up here. The size that is displayed on a navigator panel is
loosely similar to the side you can do
that is displayed in the YouTube
recommendation section. Yeah, it's pretty
good to just take advantage of the
Navigator Panel here because you can have a real feel on how
your thumbnail looks. Really reduced and scaled down. So it kinda helps you
make decisions on how small or big picture
B, in this case, I think it's pretty all right. Okay, looks nice. Then we just kinda duplicate it. Just stand on the layer and then press Control
J, what this does, it just duplicates it and
then just move it down. Then we just going
to change the text to hold up on fiber. So that's how you
correct me from wrong. I'm not really good at spelling. Yes, so let's scale it. Let's scale it
down a little bit. We don't want it to be
a main focus of this. Now, once you look
at the Navigator doesn't look very nice
because you know, they're both
overpowering each other. So we'd like there to
be a little hierarchy, so we just kinda change the color after on
Fiverr text here. Go onto gradient. Go on to the gradient. We just got to go to a
black and white thing. Like black and white. Changed this black one to a little grayish because they don't really
liked the back. Nice. And you want to see how they look reverse like with the black side down. This looks really nice. Maybe we put down a little bit. That's good. It looks pretty good. So why I chose a random number
for this text? Because it's gonna be
a little click baby. We're just going to
go on to the texts. Just going to make it pixelated. So Window, USC, the thumbnail, they're going to really
want to know how much they actually made
on, on Fiverr. So it makes them want to click. We're not just giving them the exact number
immediately that would defeat the purpose
of them trying to wanting to know and
clicking the video. So yeah, we just kind of
pick their interests. So in order to pixelate
this textbook, I'm just going to press it, go to filter, pixelate and
press mosaic, I think. Yes, so Convert
to Smart Objects. But before that, make sure you duplicate it and then
make sure you hide one. So in the case that
we need again, we haven't already go to Mosaic, Convert to Smart Object. Then from here, how
much we want to see it. So just looking at over here, we just wanted to make
sure that it's legible. It can be seen as a number, but not to let your body, you can know what
it actually is. Like. Just 15161717 is
perfect in my case. Yet. You haven't
that's the TTX down. Okay. So that's good and all but let's go to the thumbnail
pack that I uploaded. We go to the emojis and
let's find the which you call that one emoji like
this shock face looking one. Just going to find
it real quick. I mean, the money
emoji work here with this shocked face
emoji think it would really work well in this one. We can choose to express
how shocked we are. Just going to download a bit. You can just rotate it. Blocking the texts
that we just going to move it down
the layers panel. Go it's like this. Wow, it's so
shocking that we got this amount of money.
Yeah, that's cool. Let's add a little effect. Let's see, this is
a fact. Look good. So we're just gonna
go to the brush tool and then we can press Alt. Then we're just going to
sample a color from over here. It gets at once we do that, make sure you are on a different
layer because you don't want it overlapping
with your, the text. So bam, so it doesn't
look nice at first. But here you can just
change the blend mode. So linear dot add. Quite disappointing, it hides, okay, let's not
do that actually. Normally, if the
tax was visible, I mean, wasn't clear
in work with that. So let's not use it this type whether you're working
with clear text, I'll protect you can read. You can try using that effect
because it's really nice. Yeah, So once we've done this, I think that's it with
the hex and typography. Was going to see you guys in
the other videos, I guess.
6. 6 How To Do Effects: By this point, our thumbnail is looking really rarely clean. But for me I just like to
add a couple of effects. This includes light leaks. I mean, light or light leaks. First of all, I'm just
going to use a flare that is in the graphics pack. Let's see between,
I'm just going to experiment with
nice-looking ones. Let's see what's this
one? Let's try flaring. Flaring my back.
It's like a ladder, what you call them anyways, like light beams or something. Yeah. So we're just going
to put them at the end. Please be nice. Then S for the particles by
manic student, I should have. I believe that a while ago. You have further to go to the light section
here, but light group. And there are a
lot of selections, maybe some of that can
go with your work. But for me, I mean, you can combine them. You can combine
quite a few of them to get some good combinations. So I'm just going
to combine them yellowish with the Ornish one. You have once you select them, just drag them to
your project file. Their control T. Maybe some of them
down a little bit. At this point, we're just
going to experiment with it. I mean, it looks pretty
bad of this angle. So Control T it horizontally. My badge is flip
horizontally, not vertically. What would this
looks nice for me. I think these loops
just like fight, like a cherry on top. These are very nice
sand in this video, we're just going to, in this video we
just do this simple, lightly perfect that
we didn't do with their thumbnail hack here.
And that's about it. We're gonna go on to
color correction or final touches in the next video. So let's move on to adapt.
7. 7 Final Touches: So for the color correction
slash final touches, we're not going to do
too much dramatic, dramatic changes to the
original thumbnail because it's just already nice
and color correction just should just be like the
cherry on top for this case, we're just gonna do a little
bit color correction maybe. So first of all, you just going to
press on the latest, the latest layer you work with, Control Shift Alt E, or Command Shift Alt
if you're on a Mac. And here you've got to admit
but a copy of the image. So yeah, so after that
you just press on it. Go to Filter and press
Camera Raw Filter. There you'll be greeted
with this panel. If you've used Adobe
Lightroom before, this might be familiar
to you because it's quite similar to
that. So here you have it. Temperature yeah, you
don't want to miss is quite a bad thing. Then there's this
button where you can toggle on and off to
see the difference? That's not quite much
difference if I didn't say so. I don't want to mess
with most things here. That one looks good enough. The thing we want to
focus here is probably the vibrance and saturation short as the color mixer here, where you can make
the colors more saturated and change
slightly hue of colors. But honestly, I'm just here
to my cherry on top edit. Just going to up the
vibrance a little bit. Maybe sucks saturation. We don't want to do
to a bunch of debt. So I like it. Minor edits are pretty easy. We can see the difference. We can see the difference
in Navigator as well. We can see how it looks if
you were under recommended, recommended list on YouTube.
And that's probably it. So in the next video,
we're just going to export it for YouTube. So
I'll see you later.
8. 8 How To Export: What's up, guys? So after we've done the
color correction and all the changes to our thumbnail and we've finished designing it. We're just going to go,
we're going to export it. So to export it, we go to File. Export, Save for
Web or rental fees, Save for Web, for
parentheses legacy. Just going to press that. And then this should pop up and our thumbnail
should be open. You just wait for it
to pop out real quick. Here. My bad, I would change it later. But most importantly,
it's the, The setup here. I've got it as PNG G124. That's the highest you can get. And that is 1.9 megabytes. So does thing is
YouTube doesn't allow any thumbnail that is
larger than two megabytes. So having it at a
low two megabytes, It's preferable, I mean, not put where it's needed. Necessary. So in the case that your
thumbnail exceeds two megabytes, you can try lower, try lowering. You can just go to PNG ape. It can lower in if indicates
that doesn't low enough, you can get go to JPEG. Jpeg has a whole
variety of different. I think the maximum is like
the best Android jetpack. But most importantly the most, the highest quality
one here is PNG 24th. After we finish
setting it up here and our thumbnail doesn't exceed
the limit, press Save. Then we're just going to
find a place to just put it. In my case, I'm just going
to find a random folder. We just call it thumbnail. Just got to put it
number because I have multiple companies and folder. I'm just gonna put
thumbnail nine, That's just a random title. You could probably rename yours. Then we're just going to
press Save n. That is it. We finish, finish creating
an exporting this thumbnail.
9. 9 Goodbyes: By the time you're
watching this, you're probably finish
watching all the other videos. I'd just like to say,
thank you very much for picking this course
and watching this course. It's been a, it's been a
pleasure for me to make videos on how to make thumbnails and for
you guys to watch it. So I really appreciate
it if you guys leave a review or I'd really
appreciate it as well. If you guys leave
your own family, works as I love looking at
other people's thumbnails and giving the feedback and my
thoughts or advice on it. So I encourage you guys to not hesitate and post questions. Or you could just post
your own works at anytime. The question or Q&A spot
here on Skillshare, so yeah. Just a huge thank
you to you guys. And I hope we meet each other again on many other courses. So goodbye, bye.
Norin Chey
