Youtube Thumbnail Design 2022: The A-Z Marketing Masterclass

1. Youtube Thumbnail Creation Course Preview: Hi, and welcome to this marketing masterclass where it's all about the perfect due to sampling. My name is Peter. I've been working in the field of video editing and design for more than 15 years. And I'm really looking forward to sharing my experience with you. More than 1 billion h of video content are consumed on YouTube every single day. And believe it or not, the number one most important aspect for a successful video is the thumping. Whether you want to jump on the most promising train of the 21st century and start profiting from YouTube's enormous one potential or jewelry or established content creator looking to boost your click-through rate to higher dimensions. With this course, I've come to comment. First of all, we'll take a look at some astonishing and even quite surprising statistics about YouTube in general. Then we'll dive into the theory of thumbnails and consider every individual element, fonts, images, colors, and they are proven best practices. With this in mind, we will analyze and distinguish between different niches and start to create thumbnails that will extend out. And we will do so not only for several very unequal topics, but also by using two completely different methods of which one is absolutely free. Also, I will discuss equipment and tools that were simply tasks. And the course even comes with a handout as well as downloadable design elements for your day. Now, it's up to you. Take joy YouTube thumbnails to the next level, and I'll see you in the course. 2. The World of Youtube: Statistics, Development and Outlook: So let's start this course with some incredible statistics and numbers about the size, as well as the ever-growing potential of YouTube as a platform in general. Now, first of all, to give you the overview, YouTube is the second most trafficked website worldwide, just after Google. And YouTube even also is the second largest search engine worldwide, Also after Google. Now, there's different ways of dealing with your competitors. And in this case, what happened is that Google simply bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion. And to finish off this very first chart with the little overview, YouTube also is the second most popular social media platform out there, in this case, just after Facebook. Now, let's continue and speak about users statistics. First of all, currently there are over 2.6 billion people worldwide visiting the platform on a monthly basis. Meaning they are bringing up YouTube at least once per month. And this makes up for 122 million daily active users. And this number has a very high probability of still continue to grow, as I will show you in just a matter of seconds, when we want to consider the general user development over the last year or so. But before doing so, let's bring up some more effects. First of all, over, 81% of the global internet population has already visited and use YouTube. And currently there are more than 51 million active YouTube channels. And here you go. As already mentioned, this is the monthly user development statistics over the last couple of years, of course, in billions. And it started with 0.8 billion people visiting on a monthly basis in 2012 and making its way all the way up to 2.6 billion people in 2021 is of course, this is our last point of reference. We are currently in Q4, last quarter of 2022. And I can definitely imagine that a lot of people will visit YouTube in the upcoming days and weeks of this year. Now what can we take away as an owner of our YouTube channel? Creating our own YouTube videos, and finally creating thumbnails from this statistics. First of all, it is very, very clear that the arena is full, so there are millions of people out there on the platform potentially viewing our videos. So all we gotta do is making our way to the catwalk, the pitch, and showing our video to the visitors. Basically, it's all the same on Amazon where you have millions of people daily who are willing to throw away their money or buy some products. And all you got to make sure is that your rank high and get placed on the shop window. And the shop window. This is basically what our thumbnail does for us. And we've got to make sure that inside the shop window we want to arrange elements in a nice way. We want to show up or elements that will really stand out from all the other shop windows and make sure that our users enter the shop, in this case, to view our videos. So that's what we're going to cover in this course. And now let's continue with some more statistics and speak about the video content on YouTube. So first of all, we've got 500 h of videos uploaded per minute, so definitely unable to watch them all. Then secondly, there's approximately 1 billion h of video content consumed per day. And also there are 5 billion videos watched per day. So now it's your task to quickly tell me what then is the average video length of a video uploaded to YouTube if we've got 1 billion h watched and 5 billion of videos watched. So I'll give you 5 s for that 1321. And of course, the average video length will then be 12 min. But don't worry, this won't escalate to a math course and therefore it has quickly continue with the demographics statistics. At, in general, we've got 54% of users mail, while 46% of YouTube users of visitors are female. And most users will fall into the age group 25 to 34, which is also the age group that I will rank in. If we want to see it in some more details. Here we go for some more statistics. In green, you can see the male users. In red, you can see the female users. Of course, those bars 25 to 34 are the biggest bars. And also, as we won't have the users below 18 include it in this case, this is where the percentages won't add up to 100%. But you can see that we've got growing numbers till the age group 25 to 34 and then falling numbers. With rising age groups. Now this might be quite interesting for you to see in general, but of course, it's a very, very big task and a very promising one for you to analyze your very personal YouTube Statistics, your personal channels data in terms of, of course, their agenda distribution as well as their age distribution to see how you can get better with your channel and how you can create even a better content. But still, I think it's very interesting to see the general distribution of active YouTube users. Here we've got the top ten countries by the way, for YouTube users, with the biggest one being in the air. In general, of course, all those countries are countries with high population. We got USA on second place, and then my country, Germany on position eight, with Vietnam closing this one with 54 million users per month. So this was about the demographics. And now let's move on and consider another very interesting statistic which deals with the aspect of money. So in general, YouTube's global advertising revenue in the last year, 2021 was approximately $28.8 billion. Now, this not only as a very, very huge number, but it also meant a 46.6 per cent year-on-year increase with regard to the previous Europe 2020. And to bring up even more data, here you can see the annual development of revenue starting in 2010 with only $0.8 billion. Of course, a number that I personally wouldn't be more than happy to take away for myself. But what this one clearly states and show us is the increase every single year until then finally arriving at $28.8 billion for the last year, 2021. Now, this definitely shows that first of all, there's a lot of money in circulation when it comes to the platform, YouTube. And this also means that there's a lot of money to be shared with the creators on YouTube. So you of course, want to make sure that you either get your foot into this game in the upcoming month and years. All you want to make sure that you will really stay in this game and continue to earn your fair share of the whole money in circulation. So, with those numbers in mind, let's move on and speak about it some more statistics. And in this case, deals with different devices. In this moment in time, first of all, 3.4 adults report that they are watching YouTube on their mobile devices. And also 70% of global YouTube watch time already happens on smartphones and tablets. And if you ask me, I feel like this number will only continue to grow in the years to come. As I feel like it gets more and more optimized for a smartphone usage. And also you have the YouTube shorts. So personally, I really think that this number will only continue to grow in the months and years to come. Now, what can we take away from those statistics? When it comes to our topic of thumbnails, we want to make sure that we really optimize for small devices such as smartphones. So thereby we want to have clear structures, both elements and all those different things. I don't want to say too much as we have a whole section Dealing with every single element. But for now, what we want to take away and have in mind are those numbers and the high demand and high usage of YouTube when it comes to smartphones and tablets. Also, mobile users report that they visit more pages as desktop users. This is also an experience that I personally can definitely share. In this case, it's 4.63 pages per YouTube visit on a mobile device versus 2.84 pages per view on the desktop version. So you really feel like the whole action is a lot faster on your mobile device. And also at this moment in time, Android users will spend an average of 23.7 h per month on YouTube, which definitely is a lot. It's 40-50 min every single day. Lastly, we want to speak about some versions statistics. And the first one is, I feel is a very, very interesting one because it actually states that more than 70% of what we watch on YouTube is determined by the YouTube recommendation algorithm. This first of all, definitely show us that the algorithm is a very powerful tool. And secondly, that the algorithm also knows us as a person quite well, what we need to get shown and recommended in order to spend some more time on the platform. Also, there's another quite interesting effects. And this says that 20% of viewers will actually leave your video if it hasn't hooked them in the first 10 s. This is definitely one of the reasons why a lot of YouTubers, some app, or at least give some hints to the upcoming video content inside the first 10 s. So of course, you only have one chance to make your first impression. And before we even can get or give the viewer the chance to even leave our video. We want to make sure that we get the click two-hour video. And this of course, can be done and achieved with our thumbnail. Now what all those statistics, and especially these conversions statistics and the last one here state is that the first impression is absolutely essential. And with this in mind, let's now leave the whole YouTube in general space and continue with a deeper dive towards the whole topic of YouTube thumbnails. So therefore, I want to see you again in the next video. 3. The Importance of Thumbnails: Now let's continue and really highlight the significance and importance of thumbnails in particular. To put it very clear why our thumbnails so important. Now, first of all, as I've already mentioned in the last video, your first impression really matters. And this first impression even is the lasting impression. And we definitely want to make sure that with our first impression, meaning with the thumbnail, we create a good connection to the viewer. Also, as YouTube is a very visual platform, the image is way more important than the text element. And in this case, this means our thumbnail is even more important than the video title. And also generally spoken images are perceived 60,000 times faster than texts. This, by the way, is also the reason why e.g. prose, when they have some sort of competitions and need to remember a lot of data or a lot of numbers. They try to create some stories in their heads because the brain really works in images. So that's another reason why thumbnails definitely are very, very important for us. Also, they of course, build anticipation towards your video content. And you can really imagine them as sort of your billboard and your one and only chance to really pitch your video. Imagine that you have, maybe you spend weeks, if not months, on a specific video already created great and awesome content. And now why should you not spend another 15 min or maybe even hour to create a great thumbnail and even really attract those people to see your grade video. Also, thumbnails are really unimportant to us when it comes to your own channel branding. So you want to make sure that you really stick to a consistent designing. Make your channel and your videos recognizable. And you can do so, of course, by creating great and consistent designed thumbnails. Also, thumbnails away from YouTube, work as a placeholder. Imagine you put your video into an email or some sort of topic, gets Googles and your video will be shown in all those different scenarios, your thumb will be seen. So even far away from YouTube, you want to make sure that your thumbnail is included on different platforms. And therefore, we really want to create a very great and engaging one. Now, leaving this slide, I want to summarize one more time the effect of a great thumbnail in sort of a flowchart view. So starting on the left side with the already mentioned great thumbnail. This of course, is our main goal of the course. And we have this great thumbnail and what this will lead to an increased click-through rate. Now, this of course means that the percentage of people really click on our video with regard to those that see our thumbnail will get higher. And this of course then means more views for our video. And now we have entered a cycle because more video views, of course, mean a higher engagement. And higher engagement will boost the YouTube recommendation algorithm. Now, we have already seen in the previous video that this recommendation algorithm really is a very, very important tool as it's responsible for over 70% of YouTube watch time. Of course, a boosted recommendation algorithm will again lead and create more views. On the right side, we've got our circle, and on the left side we've got our two to enter this circle. So we definitely want to make sure to have a great thumbnail which will increase our CTR, create more of use, higher engagement. And then finally, a boost the recommendation algorithm to then of course again create more views. So with this in mind, we want to leave this part and now really dive into the thumbnail creation focused on every individual element. And that's what we're going to cover in the next video. 4. Elements in Focus: Fonts, Words, Images, Colors and more: Alright, so now we'd really like to focus on each and every individual element that makes up for a great thumbnail. Now here you can already see a nice thumbnail or let's say, a nice composition of elements that builds up a great thumbnail. And what we want to do now is browse through all the different shapes and texts that you can see here. And quickly mentioned, they're really best practices for them to be included. I will always mark the element under consideration in green and we want to begin with your main image. Here on the right side, of course, in green you can see the main image right in the center of our thumbnail. Now, first of all, what you want to make sure and what you need to have in mind, of course, is that your main image will be your center of attention. It will be seen first and it will draw most of the attention from your viewer. They abide. What we want to make sure is that we will evoke a connection or an emotion from our potential viewer to really get them catched and make them interested in what's coming up inside our video. Also, what has been proven to work very good is to show face, facial expressions in your main image, and especially show strong emotions, such as sadness, anger, and joy. Now, I'll give you a couple of seconds to guess what of those three emotions will actually have the very best results so far and analyzed in different statistics. So will it be either a sadness, anger, or joy to show in your main image that will draw the most attention and results in the best click-through rate. Also, what we can do is show the main topic of our video in this main image. Now here what you can see on the right side is basically just the shape of me with a strong emotion. But as e.g. you want to do a review for a drone or maybe a review for, let's say an iPhone or whatever. Then of course, you can also show the product under consideration here in your main image, or maybe you as a person holding that product. That's of course, also a possibility display, apart from simply showing the person with a strong emotion. Also, you could give a hint to result and e.g. blur that result, draw some attention and create interest. For your upcoming video. It has been shown and proven that over 70% of popular thumbnails feature a human face. And now to give the result from what I'd like to ask you regarding the emotion of sadness, anger, enjoy. It really has been proven that thumbnails with actually sad emotions have the highest chance of success. Now, those points in mind for our main image that we also of course, would like to be placed in the real center of our thumbnail. Let's now move on and regard texts and fonts. Again, of course, you can see them highlighted on the left side in the green color. That's the text. And first of all, to put it very general, it has been shown that it's recommended to include text to your thumbnail. Now this is also a point that I already mentioned in the last video that when e.g. you don't even give your video title, let's say in an email where you simply want to link your video by showing the thumbnail or by showing a general image that you want to make sure that even the thumbnail alone, whether it's text, makes clear what this video will be about, or at least creates some interests to watch this video. Next point, it has been analyzed in terms of your actual text content inside the thumbnail. To be best practice not to fully replicate your whole video title and thereby gift double information. But to either summarize it or even better built on your video title. So for now, maybe let's imagine you, let say did a set of experiment, two month of options trading or something similar to that, then your video title could be something like, I tried options trading for two months, my experience and results. And your actual text inside the thumbnail could be something like I made this in that amount of dollars and you want to blur out the number. Or maybe you write something like this trick, save my money. At least you want to make sure that the text itself will stand out and be engaging enough to create a click. And also of course, it should build up or add to your actual video title. So that's just a quick example. And basically the next point here adds up to that example because of course we want to give a hint to our video content or bring up a question that really creates interests and give us that click. From our potential viewer. Next, we have some design additions. In this case, what we want to make sure is that we will choose bold letters and a really, really clear font. Let's have in mind, again, what we have mentioned in the last video that we really want to focus on an optimized for small devices such as smartphones. Therefore, of course, we want to include bold letters that are really easy to read. Also, we want to have our element, our texts elements stand out from the background and environment by maybe adding a shape or a different color in the background of our texts. This is what you can see here inside the image behind our text, which is now of course in green because I highlighted it, because we are currently speaking about it. But in general, I have included this red shape here behind the text that has originally, originally been created in wide. So therefore, it is really very easy to read. And also with the shape and the background, we have made it even more clear and have added this nice little structure that we're now also going to consider inside the colors and shapes slides. So therefore, let's move over to that slide. And you can of course, see those shape elements marked in green. And what I've also added to this slide here is basically the edge around our main image that is now also highlighted in green. So we will consider that as well on this slide. First of all, of course, what is very important is that we will stick with our general color scheme to create those shapes and really built up a recognition factor and build up our channel and video branding. Also, we want to use a bright and expressive colors that are really easy to see, easy to recognize, and include heavy contrasts. Just have a look one more time to our texts. Of course now as the text is written in orange and my shape here is now marked in green. The text is very hard to see, but in general, this is a very nice possibility to add even more contrast and to make your texts even easier to read by really adding up a heavy contrasts here for our final shape behind the text. And also add a contrast to maybe the edge around your main image to really make that main image stand out from the background. Therefore, we also want to avoid too much fading and unclear structures. We really want to have very, very clear edges and therefore make it easy to read and easy to see what has been shown inside our thumbnail. We want to use shapes and blocks. That's what I also already teaser to segregate our elements and support our branding. So of course, with the colors, we can support and build up our branding. And with e.g. the edges, even around our main image, we can make sure that we have a very clear structure and really separate all those different elements. Of course, inside this course, I will also show you how to build up those edges and create the edges around our main image with both methods. Methods, meaning we want to do so inside After Effects and also in the part, including only free methods that will be a part or a sector where I'll show you how to build up the edges around our main image. In general, we want to stick with 22 max, three different main colors. And this of course, is only true if it does not completely mismatched your actual video content. So of course, if, let's say your video is about the brightest video of all time or whatever, then there might be a small exception where you can use a more colors. But in general, as we want to have our branding and we really want to be very clear with our structures at a bias that you use two to three main colors for your text, shapes, general coloring of your thumbnail. Last but not least, let's consider symbols and some additional elements. Here on the right side, basically everything apart from our main image or shapes and our text is part of this section. So we have this green arrow here. We have the similar texts and we have the additional element on the right site. So first of all, depending on our main image, this has already been mentioned in the main image part. We can give more hints to our video content with additional elements. So now S domain image is basically just meet with a strong emotion. If this is e.g. a. Product review, then you could give the product here on the right side inside this additional element. Or if you're talking about YouTube, as in this case, for this thumbnail, then you could give the additional element on the right side. But if your main image, in this case is the product itself, then you could also get rid of the additional element and really fully concentrate on only that product. So it really depends whether your actual main image already fully covers the thumbnail and what you actually did decide to show inside the main element. Also, my advice would be, and it had, it had, it has also already been shown to be the most successful strategy is to have a very balanced thumbnail. Meaning if you have, just like now the text here on the left side with our main image in the center, that you want to add an additional image to really have a balanced overall structure. And the same amount of elements on the left as well as on the right side. And really create this nice and clear distribution of elements. Symbols like errors or icons can read a really nice detail to create interests. E.g. if you have this era moving down, if you have done your stock analysis or your options trading, whatever this of course, creates some extra interest for our potential viewers and add up to our main images emotion or make the emotion even more clear. And the last point that I wanted to include in this slide is that you should at least generally consider to include your logo, your thumbnails. For this one, there's really no general advice. I've made the experience that is basically just a matter of personal taste. Whether we, whether you would like your logo to be placed inside your thumbnails. But of course, if you decide to do so, then what you want to make sure is that you stick to a consistent style and consistent logo placement. So if you have your logo, Let's say placed on the lower left side of your thumbnail, then you really wanna do so in all your upcoming thumbnails. But as already mentioned, in this case, there's no general best practice. It's just basically your decision whether you want to include your logo inside the thumbnail or not. So that's it for this presentation. We've talked, talked about every individual elements and their best practices. And now we want to continue with another summary, giving all the important tips and hints for your perfect subnet. And this presentation that's now upcoming is also part of the course resources. Meaning you can download it and really use it for yourself to look up the most important strategic tips and also some general structures about thumbnails. So therefore, see you again in the upcoming video. 5. Thumbnail Success Parameters in a Nutshell: In this video, I want to summarize one more time the most important elements and aspects on your road of really creating that perfect YouTube thumbnail design. And I want to do so by eliciting the top ten off thumbnail success parameters in a very clear structure inside this presentation. Also as already mentioned, this presentation can be downloaded so you can really use it, check it out one more time. And in any case, you want to look up some of those parameters as well as some general data. And this general data is what I'd like to start with. So first of all, let me say it one more time that 90%, the best performing videos on YouTube really have a custom thumbnail, meaning that you won't choose this automatically generated thumbnail by your YouTube video content, but you will really create a custom thumbnail to be a lot more successful in order to be able to do so, what you need to make sure is that your account is verified. So this step must be done and accomplished in order for you to be able to upload custom thumbnails. Now, let's speak about file size and aspect ratio to create your thumbnail. First of all, of course, you want to create it in an image file, meaning it should be a PNG or JPEG file. It can also be a GIF file, but my advice would be for you to go with PNG or JPEG. Also, the 16 to nine ratio will work best. And as recommended file or pixel size, it will be 1288 times 720. So this will be the file size that you and we in the following tutorials want to create our thumbnails. And also the final file size has to be lower than two megabyte. So this just to go ahead and start with some basic data. And now let's start with the top ten list. So first of all, let's speak about some general rules. Now, the first one will be that you want to make your thumbnail represent and visually connect to your content. Of course, all those different points have already been sort of t-shirt and underlined in the previous videos, but now we really want to put them into a top ten list. And the first point will be that we really want to visually connect our content. Secondly, we want the thumbnail to be, of course, expressive and attention grabbing. So as mentioned, this thumbnail is our shop window and of course the shop window mass grab the attention of our potential of us. We need to stand out because the viewers can not guess or imagine the content or how great our final video will be. And therefore, all we got is the video title as well as the thumbnail. And most important, as I've also already shown to you, because YouTube is a visual platform, our brain works with visual data, and we really want this visual data to convince the viewer. So therefore, we need to make our thumb and expressive and attention grabbing. Third in line is that we want to choose and stick with a consistent style when we try to create our thumbnails. This again comes with connection to the topic of branding. And of course, we want our channel to be consistent and really represent our own content, and we want our videos to be recognizable. And the fourth point here is that we want the thumbnail to be optimized for. First of all, now of course, all devices, but in general or most important, we want it to be optimized for smartphones and small devices. And if we really optimized for small devices, then we will definitely create a thumbnail. They can also very well be seen and analyzed for, of course, desktop devices. So the special focus should be on small mobile screens. And those are basically the first four points here inside our general thumbnail rules. Now let's go ahead and one more time. Underline the importance of specific elements. So the fifth point will be that we want our thumbnail to be built around one main element, which can be, as I've shown to you, our face with a strong emotion. Or it might as well be a product if we're speaking about reviews or whatever might be the case. Now, the sixth point is that we want to definitely include texts inside our thumbnails. And with regard to the content of the text, we wanted to combine and built on the video. So we don't want to reproduce the video title. We don't want to be boring for the viewer to sort of create this double information, but we want to create even more interests in connection with our video title. Make our potential of us. Think about what might be the content, what might be the result, and give some hints, but of course, not release any full results. And the next point in line is that we want to avoid truly fonts as well as some unclear structured, but it's unclear structures, but we really want to use. Bold and clear. Let us this also of course, comes in connection with our aim of optimizing for small devices, of making it very quickly accessible, very quickly to understand, and to transfer into what we'd like to show on our thumbnail. Now therefore, of course, we also want to use striking colors, heavy contrasts, or comes in connection with really introducing those clear structures. Very easy to understand and to read texts and images. We want to complete our thumbnail with small symbols that even improve our engagement. We also want to use shapes, e.g. in the background of our text. To make the structures even more clear, we might use arrows, icons, etc, to draw even more attention. And increase, maybe by just 1%, but increase the click-through rate one more time by, as mentioned, using small shapes and symbols and point number ten, the last one is that you should consider adding your logo. This one more time, just to list for you, basically it's your decision. There is no general rule which is more successful. But of course, if you decide to do so, then do it in a consistent style. Here we go with some extra. So therefore, I changed the numbers to letters. And letter number a will be that if a generally matches your channels topics, then think about being personal and really showing your face. It has been proven, and it gets proven every single time when analyzed, that showing your face has the best possibilities, has the best engagement your personal, you create a stronger connection with your audience. And you can even use your face to convey a strong emotion. We have talked about that strong emotion, being anger, sadness, or even being happy. Being said, is the strongest one. But of course, definitely you are not limited to only crying inside your thumbnails. Here you see basically a thumbnail without a face. And this one can be transferred by using me in this case, being sad or being surprised about a result or whatever. At least we create some interests for our viewer. Also with the letter B, use colored edges as shown to you in the previous video to really stand out, strengthen your branding and create even clearer structures. Also, use shaped texts backgrounds to add contrast and really draw attention. And if you take a look at the development of the thumbnail here on the lower side, from the left one without any picture to the one in the middle. And now even adding some more structure, some more shapes than this really further enhances and brings our thumbnail to the next level. We have a very clear structure. We can see our text even better, and we can also really see the image even better with this red shape around me as a person and even more. Also, one more time, underlines and strengthens the colors and the branding of our channel. Last but not least, apart from other things that I just mentioned to you, all the basic general success data or the proven best practices for every individual element and so on. Really important is that you add your own spice. So apart from all that's been mentioned, tried to add your own spice. And this can be done by every single element that has just been mentioned. There are creators that even try B and create their very own individual style by only using a special font, which might be just a little too early, but not too much definitely. But that's their way of really establishing an individualist style. So be creative at your unique style. And again, this can be done with the font, with the coloring, with shapes, effect. Try to be creative and really apart from all the general rules, create your very own style. So if again, you take a look at this thumbnail, which is definitely a very good thumbnail. So we have a clear text. We have a good strong emotion for our main image in the middle. Also, we have this YouTube icon on the right side. So this might be something about, about YouTube, how we add no, devastated with YouTube and the last time, whatever. But we can even bring this to our individual style, e.g. if you are a content creator and you're working with Premier Pro, whatever video editing software. And you write something like why I changed to Premier Pro and you should too. Then maybe this gives a hint that of course we want to consider different video editing software. And we want to connect this topic of video editing to the thumbnail, which in this case might be a bad signal or whatever to create even more interests and to make our thumbnail really stand out and be definitely individual. This now was just one idea of me. Of course. This now should be transferred from this YouTube image on the right side to maybe Premiere Pro or whatever. But I do not know, just wanted to connect the video title to a general effect that has also been added to really create an additional space, which in this case can be done with this bad signal. Or if you imagine that we could also transfer this thumbnail here in the middle, maybe to a cartoon effects. You are a designer. You read something like why drawing my newest picture almost made me quit YouTube. And you transfer your whole thumb here into a cartoon style. So just be individual, tried to give your own spice, which is definitely another very, very important step that needs to be mentioned here inside this presentation. So that's basically it. We got ten points. We've got some extras. And of course you, on the last slide, you want to see that you add your own spice. And with all this in mind, let's now move ahead. Go along and see you again in the next video. 6. Researching and Analyzing a Niche: With all our theory from the previous videos in mind, let's now go ahead and complete this knowledge by doing a little deep dive here a directly on YouTube. And for now, I've opened up my VPN pretending to be in the United States. But of course this applies basically for every single country, wherever you currently are on the word. And right now, this is just the basic YouTube page here in anonymous and mode. So what you can see here is basically an and personalized view of YouTube. And I have opened up different categories here just to show you that, of course we have some, some general steps, some general rules that apply for a thumbnail to be successful. Justice, e.g. showing a face will definitely make your chances of succeeding higher. But still we need to differentiate, of course, between a very different categories. And all those different categories have different elements and different highlights they want to focus on for a thumbnail to have a very high chances to succeed. And I have just opened up some tips here to show you the differences. So for now let's maybe start with the gaming category. And I have just typed FIFA 23 ridges are very popular game here. Football game. And let's start with that tab. And what you can see here, apart from this very first one, which is just an advertisement, is that the whole category seems to be very, very bright. So definitely not only the two to three main colors that I've mentioned in the last videos. But still we can find some elements of what we have spoken about meaning. Almost every time we have a face with a very strong facial expression of interest is here or here, this person in shock, this person thinking. So a person really trying to create some interests for the upcoming video just as here as well and also here. So that's definitely an element that we have talked about which will increase your potential viewers. And also here you can see this little edge around the person to really highlighted apart from the background. The same can be seen here just a little bit. And in some cases we also have edit text elements which do not fully replicate our title above sort of give you another hint. Maybe ask a question here to just create higher engagement so we can find some elements. But as mentioned, all in all, the whole gaming industry, to be honest, seems to be a very bright. But also when analyzing your special category, you will find that in a very natural way, you can sort of see what thumbnails wheelbarrow work best and how to really create those thumbnails. And as e.g. in this game, all the elements are themselves very, very bright, just like these cards, it will be a very natural way to create your thumbnails, thereby also in a bright way. Nonetheless here as well for the texts e.g. what you can see is that we have those edges here to make the text visible in front of our background. Also, the font itself seems to be very clear. So all in all, there's definitely some elements that we have already talked about. And in general, when speaking about showing your face in this case, it's also, of course, question of whether or how much you already have established as a personal brand. If you feel like you have analyzed that people searching for this term gets to view your video because of the game itself, rather than because of you as a personal brand. Then of course, you can also focus on elements of the game that have newly been established or whatever. But of course, if you are already an established personal brand, then you definitely want to make sure to include your face here to create a higher click through rate. Now a very different niche. Apart from this seemingly very bright one here is e.g. the cinematic Trevor one. If you open up this one, you'll see that we have really very, very clear structure, a minimalist design here. Almost every time all we see is basically the landscape, maybe with very small, but of course still clear text elements such as here or with this Slovenia video. So definitely you wanna do your analysis on what you want to cover. And in this case, with those travel videos, as they really have a high focus on the content, on the landscape. It seems to be not as important to show and include your face, but also the same applies here. If you have a high established personal brand, then you still want to include your face, I'd say to further increase your CTR in this one here. But still a very, very different from the gaming one that we have checked out before. Now another one here focusing on product reviews, might open up with research for best creator laptop of this year. Then we'll see that, of course in a lot of those videos, we have the product and focus that I've already mentioned that you can then use as a main image just like e.g. here. Here it's a combination with the person and some laptops. Here we also have the person with the strong emotion again showing two different laptops. And here again we have. Some different laptops in focus. But if you check out the text element again, then what you can see here is that in both cases or in all cases that we can currently see, we have very clear fonts that are easy to read also on small devices. And even in this case, we have the shape here in the background to create higher contrast and to really make the text stand out and be easily visible and readable. And in most of the cases, we also have the texts to add up and to not fully replicate our video title. Now here what you can see, this seems to be the same guy as this one here. So he has a very clear structure of using his thumbnails. He's in the middle himself with a very clear and strong emotion creating interests. And then he has those two different laptops here that he maybe wants to compare or that he wants to focus and highlight on. So this is another niche shear focusing on product reviews. And then for the last one, Let's maybe search for best stocks to buy in this year. And this seemingly seems to be the closest one to all the different hints that I've currently given you and the family that I have created so far. Because of course here again, we have very clear texts that create interests by focusing on very few significant words. By these, we have a person with very, very strong emotion. In this case also, we have the edges around the person. Although I personally would put the person in the middle of create maybe a little higher contrast just as key. Just the same here as well. So we could create higher contrast for the person, but we have strong significant words by these, we even have the additional element, the arrow to create further interests. Here we have added a small little number. And again, those persons show strong emotions or try to create interest. For our video. That's basically it, the way I would do it as really go too deep dive into your niche. What you could also of course do is maybe create some filters here. If you are doing a video on a very trendy theme, which is just right now up-to-date. So maybe you want to focus and bring down all the different videos to just uploaded this week. Check out how the fears of those thumbnails move here. And then of course, every single time I tried to add your very individual spice. And what you can also always do to sort of create some ideas and see what works. Is you open up the platform Canva that will definitely speak about later on when doing the second method, which is a very free run to create our thumbnail. But you can open up that platform, search for thumbnail, and you'll find a YouTube thumbnail. We want to open up that one. Now we are here in the design tool. As mentioned. We'll do an analysis and of course, the creation of our thumbnail later on here inside this one. But you will find a lot of different templates here and get some inspiration for what might work for a very different categories. Just like here, we have our math tips, e.g. which is also very minimalist design focusing on only those two colors. Then here we have the person with the strong emotion. Also we have our shape here and background of the text. So general, of course, feel free to also browse those different templates here and then end up with all the analysis you've done here directly on YouTube. Now, this together and in combination with all the theoretical steps that we have talked about, are now really hour methods of doing and creating a perfect thumbnail. And therefore, we now want to close the whole theoretical part and really start creating those grade and engaging thumbnails. And therefore, I'll see you again in the upcoming video. 7. Setting up a Greenscreen and Taking the Perfect Shot: Welcome to the second part of this course, the practical one, where we now want to go ahead and start to really create those thumbnails together from scratch. And as already mentioned, we want to do so including different methods. Now before we therefore take our laptop or PC, put together the different elements too, then finally create our thumbnail. What we need to do, first of all, of course, is to take a photo of ourselves because of course, we want that one to be included in the thumbnail and maybe even show some of those strong emotions that we have seen to be working very good in our theoretical part of the course. Of course, there are different methods, a lot of ways to take that photo and finally, include that one in our thumbnail. But what all methods have in common is that for the final photo, we only want our body to be included and all the other elements of the original shot should be excluded and keyed out because we then want to add up the thumbnail with some virtual elements such as text element, maybe some additional elements and colors. So therefore, inside this video, what I want to show you is some different methods on how you might take that photo and continue working with while all the different methods will be covered in the upcoming videos. So don't worry whether you have a green screen or not. We'll cover all the different original shots in the upcoming videos. Maybe to start off with, I'll show you the method that maybe requires the most equipment, the most additional equipment, and then we browse down until then finally, basically only taken a shot that we will then continue working on in the upcoming video. So first of all, please don't be confused as I've opened up another software that so far hasn't been covered in this course. It's the OBS Studio. And I've opened up that one because of several reasons. First of all, I can show you a method where I can take a quick thumbnail or a very quick photo of myself. We can then cover. And also maybe it's quite interesting to see as this software really is my basic software to record. On one hand my courses and on the other hand, even a lot of my YouTube videos. So maybe let us directly start inside the software and it gives you a very quick overview on what the software can do for us. Basically, it's a screen recording software. And of course what I'm currently recording is first of all, my laptop screen and then add it up with my additional webcam here in HD webcam that will make the picture here on the lower right side of the scene. And now as this software is also always giving me a preview of the current scene here on top. And right now, as I'm showing the software inside the screen, this is why the whole scene will be replicated basically infinitely times. So I hope you're not too confused. If I maybe switch for a second to a normal browser window, then here we are back with the very standard view on how you can see this course. So it's made up of different sources. First of all, we have the video source, which is the HD webcam here, making the picture of myself. Then we have the audio source. This is the microphone in this case that I'm recording with. And of course we have the screen here making up the whole scene. And inside this OBS Studio, basically why I'm showing you this is that you can set up a lot of different scenes. And it's also the main reason why I'm using a green screen. Because of course right now I'm sitting in front of my webcam, while directly behind myself, there is a green screen. And the screen screen is then covered with an effect inside this video source to fully replace the green color. Now here I have also made up a lot of different scene so I can directly switch and e.g. even show my mobile screen by using a shortcut that I've created. And here you can see the mobile. And maybe I could go ahead and show you something inside an application and continue explaining what I'm doing or whatever. And just show you what I'm doing on my mobile screen. And for this scene, what I've also done is lower the opacity or lowered the colors for the laptop recording. So back to the Internet window here you can see the full focus really is on my molar right now. Also, I could switch up to another scene. And now the focus should be on both my mobile screen as well as the browser window. So that again, I could directly go ahead, maybe show some statistics inside the browser, continue explaining something on my mobile screen. And the very nice thing is that I can switch directly while recording my video insight OBS Studio. So that's how I'm basically building up my YouTube videos. And therefore I even have the whole YouTube intro as well as ultra are included here as an individual scene. Meaning if I switch to those scenes, then for a couple of seconds you won't see myself, you won't hear myself. But the full screen will be covered only for this YouTube intro. Intro. So that's basically my way of working and creating a YouTube video live without having the necessity to then afterwards, doing all those cards, creating different scenes because it can really be done. Life Year inside the software. Now to make the transition to our aim of creating a thumbnail and first of all, a photo of ourselves. I also have a scene here, which is called thumbnail. And now I can quickly change to that scene. And what you'll see here is that I'm now covered in the full frame. And behind myself, there is only this green wall. So what I've done is again, I take my HD webcam, key out the green color, then add up another virtual green color, and then just take a screenshot of that scene. So I can show you that here in the main scene. All I need to do is right-click that one and choose screenshot. And of course, then I have the thumbnail scene activated. I choose screenshot, make a move and show a strong emotion, whatever, and then take a screenshot. So that will be the first method on how we can achieve and really very quickly create a photo of ourselves. Basically, we don't even have to stand up, get away from our laptop, but we can do so directly here in front of my setting. So what's needs to be bought for those thumbnails senior to work is you need to have a green screen behind you yourself. And in this case, I'm also using an additional webcam and HD webcam. But of course it might also work with the standard webcam or your laptop, e.g. if you open up the camera tool on your laptop, that right now my normal initial webcam will open up. This is where you have the black screen here on top because it's covered by my HD webcam. Here we have the original one back. Of course the quality is a little lower and you can see the green screen here behind myself. But basically you could also now grab a photo, grab a screenshot, and then continue working with that one. So that's the first method, including a green screen. And I'll show you the green-screen later on with another method. Method. And the second thing you need or might need as an HD webcam. Now back to our main scene and we'll continue with the second method. And this is the method that I personally use to take my thumbnail shots. And by the way, also to create all my course intro videos. And I'll show you that one with an example picture. Here you go. This is just myself standing in front of the very same green screen that I'm currently recording with. And also what I've added is two extra light sources to create some better conditions. So you'll see one light source here on the lower right side and another one here on the lower left side. So what this will do is it creates a really nice green screen. Any shadows and great light effects already here on the main seem. So that's the second method. I just turned my green screen for night in-degrees, do some thumbnails. And if you've got your next videos already in mind, then you might even take a lot of different shots, different emotions, and you have all those thumbnails covered and you can continue working with different emotions. So for this one, what you would need in best-case is the very same green screen. In this case, you can really pull it up and it stands very nicely without creating any scratches or whatever. So you have a very clear picture that can then easily be transferred into the scene that we can continue working with. And additionally, you might also choose to buy some additional light sources that will just make your afterward a little easier and you don't need to pay too much attention on additional color correction. If you don't have a green screen or additional light sources and no problem because the third option, I can also show you that one would be to just take a picture of yourself basically in front of a wall. And this method will also be covered in the upcoming videos. So all we gotta do is place ourselves basically in front of an all white wall and we'll take a picture. Also in this one, there's no additional light sources. So you can really see the lighting is a little worse, but as mentioned, no need to worry. We'll also cover that one and create a very nice thumbnail out of that. So those are basically all the three different methods that I want to include in this course. First one directly taken a screenshot with your webcam. Second one, placing a green screen, taken a screenshot in this case just with your mobile phone, which I'm pretty sure of is capable enough of shooting a knife, a nice HD picture. And the third one will be used your very same mobile phone to just create a shot in front of the white wall. I will include all three shots for you, all three example shots inside the course resources. If you want, you can work with those and see how different shots and different original photos work out for you. So there will be an example photo of this one just in front of the wall. That would be an example photo of myself with the webcam and that will be an example photo of myself standing in front of the green screen. I hope this was helpful for you. We got the original shots, you even got a little insight on how I'm creating my courses, as well as my YouTube videos here inside of Adobe, inside of the OBS Studio. And therefore, we can now close this video and I'll see you again in the next one. 8. Keying the Greenscreen with Adobe After Effects: Let's get into Adobe After Effects. And in this video we want to start and deal with two of the three example pictures. And basically those will be the two pictures where we have actually used a green screen to create them. And of course, our final goal of this video then will be to cut out the green areas and really be left over with only the person inside the original pictures. So for the first setup, we got the green screen underscore one as well as green-screen underscore two example pictures. Those are just two different pictures in the same setup. We're only the person is showing different emotions. We will deal with that setup first and then we'll also quickly consider the webcam snapshot that has been taken directly in OBS Studio. And remember for that one, the original green screen has already been replaced with an effect directly in OBS Studio. And other added was adding another, let's say, a virtual green-screen with this new green solid that you can here see behind the person. And for both of those methods and setup will find a very quick way on how to get rid of the green areas. Now before we'll dive into that topic, let we quickly mentioned that of course now this won't be a full course on how to use Adobe After Effects because first of all, it would be way too much content. And then secondly, for this topic, it's irrelevant as we would really like to have the full focus on only the thumbnail creation. Now, if you're still interested in really learning Adobe After Effects from a to Z, then I created a full course covering all the different effects and tools. You can also find that course on this platform. And of course, I'd really like to welcome and see you again in that course. But now let's get back to our topic of thumbnail creation and all that I already did here inside of After Effects was to create a new project named thumbnail creation. Of course, this can be done with File New Project and then you can choose your location as well as your name for the project. I already imported the five example pictures that of course, you can also find inside the course resources in the example pictures folder. Now, let's go ahead and create a new composition with the settings for our thumbnail. So we want to choose composition, new composition, and then we name that one thumbnail because this will be our final comp. And for the width and height, we want to choose the settings that we have seen to work inside the theoretical part. So it will be 12, 80 times 720. And for the duration, it won't really matter as we are creating a picture, but just to be sure and to not have, let's say, the danger of rendering our picture 1,000 times at the end, if we have a duration of 10 s and we miss on only really rendering one frame. So therefore, we want to make sure of not being able to do that mistake. So therefore, we will just create a duration of only one frame, choose. Okay? And here we got our basic setting. Now, let's go ahead and take our green screen underscore one picture, start with one and import it directly into that composition. First of all, as this has very high-quality, we want to scale it down. So we'll open up the scale options by choosing the shortcut S. Then let's bring the one down. Maybe this should be okay for now. And before we want to use the green screen effect here and get rid of that area. First of all, we need to create a mask so that we really fully only focus on that green area. So let's take the pen tool and just roughly draw a shape here around the person so that we only have the green area included in that picture. And now we can continue and add the very intelligent key light effect. So we choose Effect keying, key light. And then we want to switch, of course, our screen color to the green screen area. And now this already looks quite okay. But to make it a little more visible, That's bring up another new helping layer which will be just a solid. So Layer, New Solid. And maybe we can even stick with this color choose Okay, and place that solid right below our green screen. So now we can really see that we need to put in some more work to create an even better a green screen. And by the way, you can also switch the view, in this case, will be the final result of course, but we might also bring up the combined met, which then will switch this one to a black and white view. And here you can also see that we need to make some further adjustments here in the white area just beside the person. And also we got some details here inside the pullover, which right now will be keyed out. So we want to change that one, bring it back to the final result. That's normally the method and the view that I use to do my green-screen adjustments. And now we want to, first of all, bring up the black value here. Then we already got it nicely keyed out here besides the person. But still we are left with the details here inside the pullover keyed out. So maybe we want to lower the weight value, but I think. In this case, this won't work. So we need to bring up another solution. But as usual, there are a lot of different ways to achieve your goal here in After Effects. And in this case, what I would like to just quickly do is duplicate this whole layer. So we want to choose that layer and hit Control D to duplicate that. And then for the one on top, we want to deactivate the key light effect, or maybe even delete that effect. And then we just draw a new mask just covering the green parts of the pole over here. And of course, as this mask is now just fully inside the second mask, what we can do is open up our masks by choosing the shortcut M. Take the first one and just delete it. Now what this will do is that the first layer will be responsible to see the green parts of the pullover. And the second one here with our keying effect, will be able to then fully delete the green-screen. Enters, focus on only the person. That's it. We've got our person cut out perfectly. And what we want to do now is take both of those layers that have created this person and just choose to put them into a new sub composition. So we want to choose Layer, pre-compose. Name this one a main picture. And just choose, Okay. And if we, of course now switch off that one, then we'll see that the whole person won't be seen anymore. So that's on how we can just cut out the person inside our first setup with this green screen here. And now let's continue with the webcam snapshot. We want to bring up that one. Place it also here inside this composition. And then first of all, let's scale it down just like this. And then let's also deactivate the main picture. So we've already covered that method. And now full focus on the webcam snapshot. And for this setup, it will be even easier to key out the green areas because of course we are no longer working with an extra a green screen, but just with a virtual one. Meaning that this green area here, red now really consists of only one exact green color. And this is why we might even go ahead and choose the linear color key effect in order to fully replace the green area. But just to be sure, let's stick with the Keeler effects. So we want to choose Effect, keying, key light again, and then of course, switch the screen color. Choose our green segment here. And this already leads to a perfect result. So for both examples shots, the webcam snapshot as well. The main picture composition, we have now created a perfect lead keyed out person. And this was our main goal of the video. Now before we go ahead and do some more adjustments for our thumbnail, but also for the main person in focus. Just like e.g. some color corrections maybe bring up some edges around the person. We now want to go ahead and achieved the very same for the person standing in front of the wall. So right now, both shots included a green screen. And in the next video I want to cover a method that even allows us to fully cut out the person just sending in front of the word wall. So this would be the content of the next video and therefore see you again and that one. 9. Alternative: Masking the Person using the Roto Brush Tool: Let's go ahead. And in this one, tried to create the very same effect as we can see here inside the thumbnail composition. For our remaining, a third example picture which was just as standing in front of the white wall. So far now, normal green-screen and use also no external lighting. But still I can already tell you that to achieve a very convincing results, we in this one only will need, let's say maybe 32 s. Why for this one where we have used a green screen, we might do this in only 28 s. So if it's just a matter of four or 5 s and more that we need to put in, then you might ask yourself, why would you even consider buying a green screen? But of course, the great advantage in working with a green screen is when trying to create videos. So all the effort that we put in to cut out the person here for this thumbnail shot would also be enough to follow along this person in time. So if we have a video of us right in front of the green screen, then we just need to mask the screen one time. And we need to apply the key light effect. And we would have a perfectly cut out a video, normal work to put in. And it's a little different here for the picture shot in front of the wall, if this will be a video of us sitting in front of the wall and we would want to key out the person that we will need to need to put a lot more work in and wouldn't definitely take more time here inside After Effects. So that's the great advantage working with a green screen. But in this case, as we just want to cut out and work with a still image. Therefore, it will be done in, let's say 30 s. But of course, as I'll be explaining along the road, we'll take a little more than 30 s, but nonetheless, let's go ahead, maybe take this second one here. And in this case, we want to create a new composition to make it a little more clear. So we directly grab that picture, place it onto this little symbol here to create a new composition. And now let's maybe discuss some different effects that you might apply to achieve the very same result. So to cut out the person, you might start with something like hearing effects. So we want to choose Effect, keying. And in this case, I can already tell you that the key light effect won't really work. It's perfectly doing its job for green and blue screens. But in this case for the wide wall, it'd be very difficult with this one. But maybe we could go ahead and grab the color range effect. And then we'll just start pick a white color and to make it a little more visible, Let's again choose a new helping layer. Again in this color will place a directly below the wall. And then we just take more and more those colors here inside the wall to try to achieve the same effect. But what will happen now here, when we grab or take this area here. That more and more parts of our hand and heads will start to also be keyed out. So already know is no more looking quite healthy. So therefore, the result won't be perfect. And maybe we would need to combine this again with a little mask here around, maybe just the hands and just the head. But still, it would be a little more work to do to achieve a good result. So let's again delete the color range effect, which might be your first idea. And then maybe take the keying extract effect. And here we can see the luminance distribution inside this picture. So here we have the dark areas, which will be the pole over here. If we keep out those areas, then you will see of course, that the solid coming through here inside the pullover and also the hair while if we decide to exclude the lighter areas. So first of all, let's bring back the darker ones. And then if we're moving this value here from the right side, then you will see that of course, more and more of the red solid is coming through for our white wall. But here at the end, you can already see that we are remaining, are left with the same problem, which will be that here in parts of our hands, as they are also very bright, you can already see the red solid coming through. So we wouldn't need to maybe combine this with a mask and therefore puts some work in. And that's why also this effect is not the effect of choice in our case, as there is a solution which in this case does the job in a very quick and convincing way. So therefore, let's not choose a direct effect here inside the keying options. But what we want to do is double-click this wall layer to bring it up in the layout view. And then we want to choose the Roto Brush Tool. So this little icon here, this icon allows us to find the edges here inside this picture. First of all, you have the option with your control button and your left mouse button pressed. If you then move up the mouse, then this brush will get a little larger while if you move down the mouse, of course, the brush will get smaller. And also with this green bar brush, you can include some areas. And if you choose the pattern on your Windows PC, then you'll switch to a red button allowing you to extract some areas. So first of all, let's just take the green one, maybe with this size here, and then just roughly draw what we want to include in our shape. And then we let the Roto Brush to do its job, which in this case seems to be already near perfect. So here you can see we got all the body included. Hair is looking good and maybe only here or hand is still not included. So therefore will again choose that to move over here one more time. And you can see that right now everything apart from parts of the watch are included. So let's bring down the radius here. Include that one as well. And there we already are. So let's switch back to the composition view to have a check. And it's already looking very good. Apart from here, this little badge is not included. And also maybe we could even make our hair so a little more smooth year, although I already would say that you would not be able to see that inside the thumbnail, but still S is working very quick. Let's also do some adjustments here inside the hair. So first of all, the batch, Let's move back to the layer view. Open up that one and you can see here that it's excluded. So we choose the Roto Brush Tool move over there very quick. And now we got the batch fully included. Then we'll switch over to parts of the hair. And here we want to switch by clicking this some seconds and then bringing up not the Roto Brush Tool, but the Refine Edge Tool. And let's bring up the radios. Use your control button. And now we want to move over the edge of the hair here. Let the tool do its job. And you can see that right now. It has transferred the hair. And since Adobe After Effects, Let's say 218 to 19, this tool really is a great, great option for you to follow along the edges, especially when you're working with pictures, you could see it's doing its job and let's say maybe five or 10 s. And we're coming out with a perfect result. Also, the hair is looking really smooth right now. And that's definitely a picture that we can continue working with. But as already mentioned, if you want to follow along the person moving here, so you're creating a video, then of course, what you would need to do is open up the layer view. You have your edges here. As you could hit the Play button here, it will render out and follow along the edges. But as we are moving, maybe the hand or other body parts are moving above each other and then this tool would maybe lose the edges. So it would be a lot more difficult. You need to stop at certain positions, refund the edges. So it would definitely take a lot more time than standing just in front of the green screen. But as we are just working with a picture, so we're still image, this will really do the job in just a matter of seconds. So in any ways, doesn't matter which example picture we are using. Number one in front of the green screen. Number two, with our webcam setup directly at the laptop, also using the green screen, or number three, just standing in front of the word wall. In any of those methods, we are now having a perfectly excluded person here. So we have cut out our main objects and therefore we can now continue putting together the final thumbnail. Therefore, see you again in the next one. 10. Preview of the final Thumbnail in After Effects: So that's what we are currently looking at, or maybe to switch back to our original thumbnail composition. In both cases, what we already achieved is that we perfectly cut out the person inside the original photo and therefore we can now definitely continue working and putting together a nice thumbnail. So being a little inspired by the emotion and guests are inside this example picture. What I did was I already created a full thumbnail inside of After Effects. And therefore, let's maybe imagine that we have our very own psychology YouTube channel, or at least we create videos covering the topic of maybe self-development. And we've already got a new video ready to be published with maybe the provoking title. Five reasons why you shouldn't go with a tight or maybe five reasons why you shouldn't fit the standard. At least let's say something in that topic. And therefore, a very nice thumbnail. It might be something like this. So you see, we got the main picture right in the center here, which is the original thumbnail picture that we can see here. Of course, it's adjusted a little bit, so we got some different colors. Here. We have this nice blue edge around the person. Also, we have a very clear and bolts texts as mentioned in our theoretical part. In this case, think outside the box and you'll see that the text doesn't fully restate our video, but really adds up to that. Also. In addition to the box text here, we got another box here as additional element on the right side. Also the person in this case is placed inside a box. And we even got another extra element here with this light bulb here coming out of the box. So there's really a lot going on inside this thumbnail. And of course we consider all the different elements and create those elements together in the upcoming videos. Now what's especially great about this composition and basically the whole After Effects project is that all the elements inside this picture are very easily interchangeable for your future thumbnails. So we can really treat this After Effects Project S, our preset, and then go ahead for our future thumbnail very easily, of course change the text. We could change the main picture with just one mouse-click. And we might even change the general color scheme for this thumbnail. Now just to show you this one as an example, we have our color correction layer here will open up the Effect Controls. Just activate this effect. And there we go, and we got a completely different color here. Now of course, this is very unrealistic as we want to choose the color regarding our main color of the YouTube channel. So normally you would stick to your color. But just to show you that even that is very easily possible to change. And to give you another example, we could go ahead and change our main picture here you have two different pictures showing very different emotions inside the course resources. One of those is the underscore one. We could just write big replace footage with another file. We'll choose the green screen underscore to import that. And you'll see that just 2 s that After Effects needs to change this picture. And again, we got it placed perfectly in the middle here, again with blue edges. So very, very easy to change that. And even for the second one, we will have 0 pole over here with the blue details. While originally of course they have been green. Also, we can change the additional elements like e.g. this box here. This is the element underscore box. Right-click again, replace footage with a new file. And let's go back to the course resources. Pick another element like e.g. a. Brain here imported. And we got a new additional element and could go ahead and create a new thumbnail, of course, will change the text, but it's just really a matter of seconds until we got a very consistent style, sticking with our general thumbnail creation style, we changed the text and we've got a very new thumbnail. So that's what we're going to cover in the next parts. And therefore, let's get started. See you again in the next video. 11. Creating the Thumbnail in After Effects - Background, Texts and Shapes: Alright, so we want to continue working on our thumbnail composition. And what we'd like to do in this video is introduce some texts and shape elements and also create a way better looking and background image that fits to the general color scheme of our thumbnail. Before we get into that, let me quickly just replace the green screen underscore two image. So again, right-click replace footage, and we'll switch it back to the underscore one, import that one. And here we are back with our thinking emotion. So first of all, let's quickly delete the red solid here. And now let's introduce a new texture here that we want to place as a background. So first of all, let's bring up the course resources. Not the example pictures folder, but the elements and backgrounds. And here you have some different shapes, of course also some additional elements like the box and brain. But you'll also find a couple of different background images and textures. In this case, what we'd like to choose, of course you are free and your choice, but this one, we want to work with the chalk. I've already imported that one, placed it here inside my media folder. And therefore, let's take it, plays it right below our main picture. Open up the scale with the shortcut S and let's bring it down just like this. And then we want to choose our main picture. Also bring up the scale that we can already see here. Scale it up to 150 per cent. Place it somewhere in the middle. And then we want to bring it up to full resolution here. But basically, for now, that's it, working with our main picture, as in this video, we'd only like to cover the background, the text, etc. And we will adjust the main picture later on when finalizing our thumbnail. So here we are with our background chalk, and let's now maybe add some more coloring which perfectly fits the color scheme of our YouTube channel. So for this example picture, we'd imagine that our YouTube channel will cover the colors, mainly blue and green, let's say. And therefore we want to introduce a new solid and make that one let's say a lighter blue. This will be the first or the main color of our YouTube channel we hit Okay? And we want to name it background coloring. Choose Okay, and replace it just like here, right above the background chalk. Now of course, right now as this has full opacity, will only see the blue layer. But what we want to do is use these mode settings here so that we can combine the layer coloring with our original chalk one. So if we would maybe add those two layers that you will see that it will only turn brighter in this case, that's not what we want to achieve, but we want to combine in a way that we're still use this blue color but make the original chalk image a little darker and more bluish. So therefore, let's maybe switch it to overlay, or even better, maybe multiply. That looks quite nice. And then we'll also bring down the coloring layer in its opacity. So we'll hit the shortcut T, bring up the opacity and lower it maybe to 50%. And I think this already looks quite nice and it has added a little bluish tint to our chalk layer. You'll see that if we switch off the visibility from our background layer, then you'll notice we have tinted in blue. And now let's go ahead and introduce our texts. So we want to choose the horizontal type tool. Click anywhere inside the preview area. And we want to start, of course, with thing. We want to write, think outside the box. And before we get into the text or character options here, what we want to make sure is that we've switched the paragraph here to be aligned left. Therefore, if we just duplicate this text, move it down, or even if we have some thumbnails in the future, you want to change the general size of that text, but you have already made sure that this text will still stick to the left side. I'll show you that in just a matter of seconds before that. That's no double-click here. And we want to bring it up to maybe 150. Change the text font to a very, very clear on which is area, maybe Arial Bold, even. I think this looks nice in terms of the font and size, so we can take that text and move it to the left. And if we now would like to change that text to, let's say a longer word, whatever. Like get to know. I know those are a couple of words, but still, what you can see here is that we still are aligned on the left side. So therefore, if we just change the text in the future or we need to make sure is that we then scale it down to fit. And not be written behind the person here. But as seen, the alignment on the left side will still be right, so therefore will right thing again. And then we just want to take that text to duplicate it. Control D. Open up the position with the shortcut P. Just move the y position, bring it down to, let's say here. And then we want to ride, think outside. And maybe we'll move over the person just a little here to the right side. Now we want to make sure that the word outside will also end in the same position as the word thing. So we'll bring down the scale or bring down the size of that text, just like this. Then duplicate that one again. Control D, bring up the position, move it down again. That's right. The box. And now, and I'd like to have a little more focused on the box. We want to also bring that one up again in size to, let's say 150. And then we want to move up the first three letters of the word, the, let's say half of the height of the box here. And we can do so with the baseline shift here with only that word in selection. Let's add a little baseline shift. And this is looking nice, just like that. So here we are with our basic text. And of course we want to make sure that the size here between thing and outside should be the same as between outside and the box. But for now I think it's already looking quite good. And what we would like to continue now is we want to add some shapes here behind those texts. Now again, as pretty much always an After Effects, There's a ton of different ways and methods to get to your goal. And for the very lazy people among us, I have also included some different shapes directly in the course resources for you, like e.g. this parallelogram. But we'll work with that later on. Let's for now just go ahead and create the element directly in After Effects. We want to choose layer new solid. And let's stick with the main color of our channel. We hit okay? And for now let's just switch off the visibility. But with the layers still selected, what we'd like to do is hit the rectangle tool here. You can switch those forms by using the shortcut queue. Until then, finally bringing up the rectangle tool again. And we now don't want to go ahead and just place it right behind the thing texts. But what we'd like to do is take it and make it even larger. This will in the future give us some more possibilities. If we have larger texts, then we can just move the whole forums. So this should be fine like that. And now we want to switch back to the selection tool, make our layer visible again. And I just like to select the lower two points here by hitting the line and then use our arrow key to just move them both in the same way to the left side and just switched the rectangle to sort of a parallelogram. So that's looking nice. And now let's bring this one right behind our texts. So we want to place it here. And then we just select that and move it over here to the left side. Maybe we even want to make it a little lower in terms of the height. So let's again just choose that layer. Select the lower two points and maybe moving upward just a little bit like this. That again, select the layer and just place it somewhere behind the text. Like this should be fine. And what we'd now like to do is again, just duplicate this solid layer here to have some more parallelograms right behind the outside as well as behind the box texts elements. And before we start doing so, let's just quickly rename that layer to have some more structure. So let write parallel Lou Graham, I hope that's quite how you pronounce it in English. At least it sounds quite like that in German. So therefore, we have our parallelogram elements Control D to duplicate it, bring up the position, and just move it in terms of the Y position to place it right behind our second text element. Now in this case, as the word art side is written a little smaller. We'd also like to make the parallelogram a little smaller. And again, we have different methods to do so. One of those would be two, again, select the lower two points and just move them upward. But this would change the grade here on the right side of our parallelogram and we want to stick with that grade. Therefore, let's just bring up the scale and scale down the whole parallelogram with, of course, sticking with our x and y proportions. So you want to make sure that this button is activated. And then let's bring down the whole size of the elements, maybe just like that. And we want to move it again to be right behind or text. Maybe do some more adjustments with the arrow keys. And like this, it should be fine. Then let's go ahead and duplicate that one more time. Maybe the upper one, because here we have a larger text again. So Control D, bring up the position, move it first of all above our second element. And then let's bring it down. To just like that. And also with the arrow keys, we can move it more to the right side. Although this is also looking quite nice, but it's just fully cover it. Like this. Again, should be good. Now we have, we have some more space, as we can see now here between the first and second one. So what we'd like to take the second element and also take the outside texts and just move them up a little bit just like that. So this is already looking quite nice. Of course, feel free to do some more adjustments like here we want to bring up the thing takes a little more. And of course we can also continue doing some more adjustments with our shapes like e.g. let's take the first one and let's choose Effect, Generate stroke. And now you'd have the possibility to even have a nice stroke here on the outside of that mask like e.g. let's choose the size of maybe 12th. And here you can see that very easily. You can also add a stroke. You could even change the stroke to maybe work on transparent. This will get rid of the blue parts. So of course, feel free to do your own adjustments. So that's just the method on how to introduce those shapes directly in After Effects. But of course, but we could also do he has just go ahead and directly grab any of those elements that I have placed inside the course resources. So there you will find a parallelogram with just like the one that we have created for ourselves. And you'll even find a square as well as a triangle. So just as an example, I have already imported the parallelogram and we could just take that element and place it, let's say maybe here on first position inside our composition. And if we'd now like to delete the black area here, then all we need to do is choose Effect, keying, linear color key. And of course switch the color to the black part here, or you want to choose the white part if you want to get rid of the edge here. And you could even just colorize the whole parallelogram, let's say in one solid color by choosing a new layer, solid. And in this case, maybe let's stick with this red here. Place it just below our parallelogram element. And then for the track matte, we want to switch it to alpha matte. And there you are with a nice red parallelogram. And of course, this is the very same for this element that I have added in the course resources and the one that we have just created for ourselves. And After Effects. You are not limited to one solid color, but just maybe again, as an example of what you could do is again, bring up the course resources and maybe let's import the background woods here just for a second. Also move it to our media folder. And then it's also introduced this one to our composition. Delete the red solid. And then for the woods, Let's scale it down. First of all, just like this. And we'd like to switch again the mat here to be the Alpha Matte from the parallelogram. So that would be one way of having this word image here in an IS parallelogram shape. Of course, feel free to create whatever you like. That was just what I wanted to show you that you can of course, create the element directly in After Effects, but also use the ones that I have added in the course resources. And also one last thing. There's also some more materials that are included, which is the watercolor here. That's personally an element that I very often use. So also we want to take that one, bring it up here into the course resources. Before introducing that element, Let's quickly again delete woods and parallelogram from here. And then let's take the watercolor one, move it over into a new composition. And first of all, we want to choose one of those elements to take. Maybe we go along with this one here on the lower left side. So we'll take the pen tool and just draw a rough mask around only that one element. And now switching back to our thumbnail composition and let's maybe turn down our first parallelogram here, make it invisible and bring up the element watercolor composition here. Also, let's place it here. Then. First of all, we want to scale it down so the element is very large, as you can see here. Just move over the whole composition and then scale it down to, let's say, 50 per cent and bring up just right behind our texts. So that will be another method of introducing a shape right behind the text. And of course, you can again just combine that shape with, let's say a solid just like that. Place that solid below the element. Again, make this one the Alpha Matte. There you are with a nice red solid in terms of the watercolor here right behind the text. So tons of different methods and ways to introduce shapes or element just right behind this text, we for now just want to stick with our original parallelogram that we have just created for ourselves in After Effects. And now that's it for this video. And we continue with some additional elements in the next one. 12. Creating the Thumbnail in After Effects - Additional Elements: Next in line, let's really make sure that we have a nice and balanced overall distribution of different elements all around our main image. So right now we've got the texts placed on the left side. And now let's go ahead add some more small symbols, icons, or even images here on the right side of that main image. And thereby also grip even more attention to our final thumbnail. So in relation to the slogan, think outside the box, what we could start with is add another rectangle or even square, and also another X or cross, which then of course we'll be placed just outside that rectangle. Let's go ahead and add a new layer, new solid. And let's maybe begin with the x and color it. In this case, maybe with the secondary color of our YouTube channel. So just as an example, this might be, let's say green. And for the name will directly choose x and then hit, Okay. So what I'd like to do now is add the x or the cross directly by introducing a mask instead of just writing the letter X, because this really should be more across then an x. And by doing it with a mask, we have some more flexibility. But just for now, we'll deactivate the visibility. Then choose the pen tool. And with the layers still selected, let's just start at a first mask, just like that. Then switch to another layer just for a second, switch back to the first one to be sure that when we continue with a mask, we will now create a new mask instead of following along this one. So thereby we'll do another mask. And then what we'd like to do, Let's bring back the visibility will choose the effect that you've already seen in the last video, which will be Effect, Generate and stroke. And now we'd like to work on the transparent. Make the color just the same color as our layer in general. And also we'd like to choose the path to follow along all masks. So not just only the first one, but also the second one. Take this little button here, follow all mask and then we want to make the brush size a lot larger, let's say maybe even ten or 12th. And then we've got a nice little x already looking quite nice. But just for a sec, Let's maybe take the second mask and replace it just a little bit. Maybe even only that point here. And there we go. There we go. We got a nice little x already added to our composition. Now for the rectangle, what we do is we simply again duplicate this layer, so Control D. And first of all, let's open up our masks with the shortcut M. Delete the first one to be the second one as well. Right now we can see the layer no more because we are working on the transparent inside this effect. But we will take the rectangle tool and just draw another mask. Maybe just like that. And as of course, the effect is still in place. We are working on all masks. This is why path will already be followed along. Now in this case, it's green, but I'd like the rectangle again to have the main color of our YouTube channel. So therefore, we want to switch the effect urine, choose the color, make it blue. And to have a little better overview here, Let's also change the general Layer Solid Color about this won't be visible as we're working inside this effect. But still I'd like to change it and also rename that layer. And let's name it box. So there we are. Let's now continue. Maybe move this layer to just about here, and then also move the x. Bring it maybe here. Also you could bring up with RD rotation, maybe rotate it just a little bit, but I think it's already looking fine and we'd like the X layer to be just above our box. That's it. We've added a nice little symbol here, following along our slogan, think outside the box. And now let's even add another small image, the one that you've already seen in the final picture, which will be the element box that you can also find in the course resources. So we take that one place that just on first position here, scale it down a lot here. Bring up the scale options again with the shortcut S. And maybe just like that, it's looking good. We want to move it over here to the lower right side. And now we want it to also fit our general YouTube colors. So maybe we'll make the light bulb blue or green. I'd say green looks a little better. So therefore, with this layer selected, let's choose Effect, Color Correction. And then change to color. And of course, the color will be our original light bulb and the target color will be the secondary color from our YouTube channels. So we want to choose the green cross here. And if we then continue into the tolerant values and bring down the lightness and saturation. Then you notice that the box will still be in its original color. And really only the light bulb will change to match our general color scheme. So that's it. We've added some nice little symbols, as well as this image here on the lower right side. And of course, as usual, you are free to continue designing and adding your very individual adjustments. Just like maybe one more quick idea, we could even go ahead and replace the letter 0 here inside this box text with this light bulb. So let's just quickly do so. Choose the element, move it over just above the letter 0, maybe like here. And then bring down the whole layer directly below our text. Double-click into the texts. We want to replace the OH, with some space lectures. Maybe just like that. Then again, select the element box, move it over just a little more to the right side. And this will be another very quick idea on a very small design elements. Of course, we need to make sure that very important, we can still easily read the text. Think outside the box, Let's just zoom out. But I think it's still very intuitive that here the slogan where we think outside the box. So again, just one more idea. Feel free to add your very own style and ideas. In this case, I'd like the main picture or the elements here, a little more on the lower right side. So we want to bring it back to just where we started with. And also double-click into this text and replace it again with the letter 0. But I think for now, that's it for this video, we've added some really nice small symbols and elements here on the right side. And what we'd like to do in the next video is doing some more adjustments here inside our main picture. So we want to have better colors and also add edges around this image. So therefore, see you again in the next part. 13. Creating the Thumbnail in After Effects - Adjustments to the Main Image: Let's continue. And in this video we'd like to add some more adjustments to the main image right in the center of our thumbnail. So first of all, we definitely want to improve the general coloring of that image. And then secondly, we will also add a nice-looking edge, probably also in the main color of a YouTube color scheme around that image. So let's begin with the coloring. And in this case, our main image itself is already a composition, which is this one here, the main picture composition. Because remember, originally we had a little struggle here that the details inside that pullover have matched the key and colors of our green screen. And therefore we edit a second layer with a mask only around those details. Placed those two layers just inside this main picture composition. And that's why with this composition we have the full access to this main image. So with that layer selected, we want to choose Effect Color Correction. And for now let's maybe go with the Lumetri color effect. Again, there are tons of different effects that you might choose to do your color correction like e.g. the color curves or brightness and contrast. But in this one, let's go with the Lumetri color effect. And we want to bring up the basic correction category here and especially focus on the tone values. So to start off, we definitely want to increase the contrast. So let's bring up that value to, let's say about 50. And then we'll continue with the whites and blacks. I think for the white value, we don't need to make too much changes already looking quite nice. And let's play with the black value here. We definitely don't want to increase that one, but rather bring it down to, let's say about 15 or so. And what we also definitely want to do is increase the saturation to, let's say about 130. So now it will look as if I have seen a little more sun this year. And overall I think this is already looking quite good. So let's check out the effect in the before and after view. So here we got our effects applied and let's switch it off. And this was our original image. So especially with the contrast and the increasement of saturation, we have achieved a very nice coloring here. Let's quickly check out the details here. Start with the highlights. But I think we also don't need to make 2 mol changes here, then continue with the shadows value. But I think that's it. And we have created this. I feel like very natural and bright coloring. So let's continue and now focus on those edges around the main image. So again, different ways that you could use. In this case, what I want to do is select our layer Control D again to duplicate that, then introduce a new solid. Stick with the main color of our YouTube channel. And we want to rename the layer, let's say two main image edge and hit. Okay? And we will move that layer right below the second copy of our main picture composition. And what we want to do now is open up the track matte here and choose the Alpha matte for the above main picture layer. So right now we've got the main picture composition on top. If we switch it off, you'll see that below that one. Here's the same copy which has been completely filled in blue. So we could go ahead and choose this second main picture composition. Move it to the right side, maybe also a little upward. To create the first, I think, very nice effect. Which now of course is not an edge, but sort of an offset, but I think it's also already looking quite nice. So this will be one way of spicing up your main image inside this thumbnail. But for now we really want to create an absolute. Therefore, I use Control Z to undo my last step. Bring back the main picture composition here, really behind the original one. And now let's again select that one and choose to enlarge our masks. So we want to choose Effect met and we want to apply it the simple choker here. And if we now choose this value here and move it to the negative, what you'll see is that our mask will get bigger and bigger. And if you use the Shift button, you can move this value here a lot faster. But I think probably just like that. It's looking quite nice. Now what we could do next is maybe take the word outside and move that text layer right in between our main image and our blue edge layers to make the letter E again fully visible. So therefore, let's quickly select our text layer and place that layer right between the two main picture compositions. There you are. We can again fully see the word out site. So to continue with, let's maybe even add a glow effect to our blue edge. So we want to select the second main picture composition again and then apply Effect, Stylize, glow. Now you can already see the edges start to become a little smoother about, let's maybe. Further increase the glow radius here to a value of, let's say about 70. Just like that. And I think it has added some nice little details here to further improve our main image. Now, maybe let's take that glow effect and apply it just with all those options in the very same way to this green cross here to also give that element a little more focus with the glow effect selected. Let's Control C, that one to create a copy. And then choose our x element Control V to paste the effect. And there you are. We got some more focus on our green x here, really stating that we are thinking outside the box. So that's basically it for all the different elements that we want to include in our thumbnail. So first of all, of course, we got the bold and very clear text here on the left side as well as those shapes directly in the background of the text elements. And then we've got some more additional symbols, as well as even a small image featuring the color scheme of our YouTube channel on the right side. And of course, we've got our main image right in the center showing a strong emotion, some good coloring, and even edit those nice blue edges around the main image. Now, one more fun thing we can very quickly do with that main image is we want to change the detailed colors here, fit our main YouTube colors. So we want to select that layer and choose Effect. Color Correction change to color. And then we'll switch the front color to be the detailed color of the pole over here. And we want to change the two color to our main YouTube color. And there we go. Seems like we're wearing this black and blue polo over. And now what I always do as my last step in basically any after-effects project is to add an adjustment layer and thereby do my final corrections. So if you are a frequent user of After Effects, you'll definitely know what this layer can do for us. Basically, it just gives us the possibility to directly make changes to all layers below that adjustment layers. So e.g. we could go ahead and choose Effect, Color Correction and maybe the curves effect and just increase the contrast with this effect. And you'll see that when applying that effect directly onto our adjustment layer, it will increase the contrast to any individual layer and element right below our adjustment layer. So this might be one possibility of doing some final corrections. Or what you could also do is go ahead and whip this adjustment layer, change the general color scheme off our YouTube thumbnails. So therefore, we again choose Effect, Color Correction and bring up the change to color effect. Now we want to choose the front color to be our main YouTube color. And you can already see that this will dramatically change this color to be red. And if we bring up the two color here, maybe make it a little more, let's say yellow or brownish. Just like that. Then you'll see that with this effect, you can easily change your whole YouTube color scheme. Of course, we won't do that very often as we'll stick with a consistent style that really matches the general colors of our YouTube channel. But this was just one way that I wanted to show you on how you can really very easily change the color. Now in this case, the x element here together with the glow effect is looking very awkward. So what I would do in that case is grab that x element and place it right above our adjustment layer so that the effect of change to effect won't affect the glow effect here inside our x. For now, let me just quickly take that effect again and delete it as I really want to stick with those colors. Now of course, you can also take that adjustment layers to bring your individual style, like e.g. at a cartoon effect or whatever you may think of to give your thumped the extra spice. In any case, what we can do now is really consider this thumbnail as our own preset. And if we want to continue working with thumbnails and we have a new YouTube video as already seen in the final result, we can very easily change this thumbnail. So of course, you know how to change the texts, but let me quickly show you how to change the image again and that this will work out pretty nice. So again, we'll take the green screen underscore one, right-click, replace footage. We choose the second image with a completely different emotion. Maybe the best emotion for another YouTube video. And you'll see that we got this image again perfectly in place. Again with the blue details here, with the blue edges perfectly around that image. And all we need to do now for a new thumbnail is give us some thoughts about some additional elements. Replaced those elements, replaced the text. And there we go with another very nice thumbnail that will be consistent with the previous one. So that's it for this video and basically that's also it for the whole After Effects section because all the different elements that I wanted to introduce to you and wanted to show you how to create them in After Effects. Now have already been covered. But nonetheless, there will be one more video in After Effects. And that is because basically together with this slogan, think outside the box, I came up with these spontaneous idea of putting the whole main image in another box, just like you can see here in this outside the box composition. So if you're especially interested on how you can achieve that effect, then of course, feel free to check out the next video. And if not, you can definitely skip that part. And we will see again in the whole new section where we want to cover only a free method to also be able to create great looking thumbnails. So see you again in any of those videos. 14. EXTRA: Main Image Box: Alright, so one more video directly in After Effects. And what we'd like to achieve in this one is place our main object, the person you're right in the middle into another box, just like we can see in this outside the box composition. So here on top at the head as well as the arm here, the person is sort of reaching out of that box. While here at the bottom, the line of the box serves really as a limit to our person and we'd like to achieve the very same. And therefore, let's first of all switch back to our thumbnail composition. Before we get into that, let me quickly rechange our original picture again. So right-click. Replace footage with another file. And of course we want to switch back to our first one with the thinking emotion. And with this one, Let's now go ahead and add a square. So we could do so directly with an object in after effects, just like we've done here for the blue square or rectangle on the right side. But for now, let's just directly take the element that I have placed in the course resources, which is this one, the element underscore square. We just take that imported into our composition. And first of all, let's scale it down to, let's say, 45 per cent. And first of all, of course, we want to key out the darker areas. So therefore we choose Effect keying, linear color key. And we want to switch the key color, of course, to black, so that we are with a nice square here with the borders of a square. And now let's go ahead and rotate that square just a little bit. Maybe like this, and then move it over to match a person. Maybe make it a little larger here, let's say 48 per cent. And what we'd like to do now is, of course, the element should appear behind our person here in parts of the head as well as the arm. While here, as mentioned, this line should really be a limit to our person on the downside. So what we could do is leave this element, leave this layer here on top, and then mask the elements here on top, as well as here at the arm area. But it will be a little more difficult. Together with the glow effects are what we'd like to do is place the element below all the layers that create the person together with the blue edge here. And then create a mask here at the bottom to just follow along the lines of our box. So therefore, let's first of all create a new precomposition, including all the layers that create the main image here. So in this case, it will be our main picture composition, as well as the main picture composition here on top and the main image edge here. So therefore, we want to choose Layer pre-compose, and we'll name this one main and hit. Okay. And then again to have the outside fully visible, Let's move the main below the text outside. And now with this one here, we can directly switch off the whole appearance of that image together with the blue edge. So just to leave the element box here a little more visible for a second, of course later on we'll place that one below our composition. But for now, just to be sure on where we need to introduce the mask. And let's go ahead and create Quick Mask here for our main composition. So we want to choose the pen tool, start here on the right side and then really move over to the left side, even outside of our box. Because we want to fully also leave out our glow effect here. So let's just start here and then we'll take that point directly, move it to be perfect and really match the edge here of our square. And then just create the full mask here. And of course we don't want to add that mask, but that's the part that we want to subtract. So therefore, let's open up the mask options with the shortcut M and hit subtract. So now we can already see that this line here very nicely serves as our limit on the lower side. And now of course, what we need to do is take our elements square and move that layer right below our main composition to then have the head as well as the arm parts here in front of the square. So that's where we are and maybe we can continue and even bring back some of the opacity on the inside of that square to give it a little more dynamic even. So, remember the original element has been black on the inside. So if I switch off the linear color key effect, that was our original object. And now let's bring back some of that opacity on the inside. So what we want to do is duplicate the whole square layer. So Control D again to duplicate that one. And with the lower one, Let's switch off the linear color key effect or even remove it by hitting delete. And then let's bring up the opacity T and lower that opacity to maybe let's say 50%. And there you go, we have some more opacity, some darker parts here on the inside, where of course the white lines, they remains in full opacity because it's another layer here, right on top. And with that line layer here on top, we can maybe even add a glow effect. So Effect Stylize glow again. And let's also here increase the radius. And I think with a radius of about 120, It's already looking very nice. So basically that's all added inside the original, outside the box composition. Of course, I moved the objects just a little bit to make the text fully visible. So what I will do next inside this composition, take my element square as well as the main composition. Move those over here right to the right side, just like maybe here. So then we can fully read are outside the box text again. Then next maybe take our square as well as our green x here. Move those two over. And then maybe also move over the element box just a little bit. But I think like this is already looking very nice and we've really created a great looking thumbnail matching our video title. So that's it for the After Effects part. And now let's move on with only three methods and thereby also create great looking thump notes. See you again in the next video. 15. Overview and description of Thumbnail Creation with GIMP and Canva: We are live in the After Effects and even the whole Creative Cloud space. And now we want to continue with the second method that will also allow us to really create great looking thumbnails. But for this one, all that we will use will be completely free tools and software to name them. Once again, it will be first of all, the image editing software, GIMP, as well as then later on, the online platform Canva, where we want to finalize our thumbnail. So first of all, here I am already on the website gimp.org. And please go ahead, follow the steps. Hit this download button, then go through the process of installation and get this software ready. Once again, It's completely free so they won't charge you anything. You can use this software. And all that we will do inside that software, where basically be the first step, meaning we want to either key out the green screen and our first and second example picture, or of course we want to cut out the white wall in our third example picture with that created picture, so only the person in focus. We will continue in Canva and we will hear, search for YouTube thumbnail and then start designing and really putting together a great thumbnail directly in Canva. Now here on the left side you can already see some great look in presets, just like e.g. this one here, where we also have a person cut out together with the white edge around that person. But as readable here, this will be only available in the Pro version of Canva, which will cost you some money. But I can already tell you that we really can fully rely on the free method together with the pre-work that we'll be doing in GIMP and still be able to create a great looking thumbnail. So that's what we wanna do. And of course the first step will be done in GIMP. So here I've got the program already opened up. So please let us now pause the video. You go ahead, download and install the software, and then we'll see again in the next one directly, again. 16. Keying the Green Screen with GIMP: So I've got Gimp already opened up as you can see. And if I now go ahead and delete the current image just for a second, then it should be looking quite similar to what you'll be seeing if you open up the software for the very first time. So in this video, of course, what we'd like to do again is managed our very first step. So we want to treat those two example pictures where we have actually used a green screen and be able to key out all the areas apart from the person in that image. So let's go ahead. First of all, maximize the software and then start importing our original image. So File Open, and we'll choose, let's say the underscore one image again and hit Open. So let me quickly again say that of course this won't be a full explanation of the software GIMP, as this might be a free tool, but still it's a very good one that allows you to really do some nice image editing and it would be way too much content again, to fully explain what this software is capable to do. So we just will focus on those steps that we want to do here in the software to create our thumbnail. And in this case, it will be all about deleting the green screen. Now, before we get to, first of all, you need the outside area here and then also delete the green part. What we need to make sure is that we will come out with a transparent area and therefore we want to be able to render that S transparent. So we need to choose here on the right side, our image right-click and add an Alpha channel. Without that, you won't be able to render the transparent areas. And this of course, will be very important for us to then later import that picture onto Canvas. So next step would be to delete the outside areas here. And therefore we can just switch to this free select tool here. Choose that one and we'll draw a very rough shape from point-to-point here around our person. And then with that one selected, we want to right-click and invert that shape because of course now we only have the parts inside considered and we want to delete the part outside. So therefore, right-click and choose, select, Invert. And now we have the outer part here selected and can hit the Delete button. So now we are only left with the green area. And therefore what we will choose will be this little tool here, which is the fuzzy select tool, or at least we'll click onto that. And if your left mouse button pressed to then switch over to the select by color. That's our choice for a tool for this one. And then we can directly go ahead and maybe click onto this green area and you'll see that this will be the first idea or the first intelligence selection that GIMP will give us. And if we hit delete, then we start to get rid of those green areas and we might go ahead, click onto the different areas and thereby manage to come out with a good result. But what we could also do if we just undo the last steps is changed the thresholds of this effect. So here we are again with the original image. And if I now inside the effect increase the threshold from ten to, let's say maybe 30. Then you'll see that we even need some fewer clicks. So maybe two or three clicks might be enough. This already looks like a very nice selection, so we hit Delete. Then for this lower area here again one more time, a delete. And it's already looking very nice. So we switch to this tool and then see what we are working with. And this is already looking like a perfect result. So basically we're already done, but now what we can do is maybe shrink the whole image to only match the person. So therefore, with this tool selected, let's just roughly draw a shape around our person, just like that. And then right-click that shape, that rectangle and choose image and fit Canvas to selection. So that's our final result. And now let's go ahead export that image. So File and Export S. And in this case, as the original image is a PNG one, we can stick with that. So this will be able to render transparent areas. And let's maybe rename that one from green screen underscore one to green screen underscore, cut and choose Export. And for the upcoming options, we can leave them all. As already said, hit Export again and our image will be saved with the transparent area that we can now continue working with in Canva. Now, inside canva will do all the rest, meaning we will do the color correction as well as bringing up some edges around that image. And that's basically our next step. But before we get into Canva, Let's quickly also cover on how we might achieve such a result with us just standing in front of the white wall. So therefore, see you again in the next one. 17. Alternative: Masking the person with GIMP: Moving on, let's now deal with the third example picture which has been standing in front of the white wall and really try to achieve the same convincing results as with this one where we have been standing in front of the green screen. And I'm pretty sure that we will be able to achieve that. So let's go ahead file open and just switch to the example pictures wide, wide folder. Then let's go ahead and start maybe again with the underscore 21 and open up that picture. So in this case, as it has been a JPEG file, it's asking us if we want to convert the color scheme and we want to do so. So directly hit that convert button. And here we are with our original picture imported on to Gimp. Now in this case as well, we want to come out with some transparent areas outside the body, outside the person. And anytime you basically hear the word transparent, what you wanna do first is right-click your original file and choose to add an alpha channel. So having done so, let's now go ahead and starts to key out the white wall here inside that picture. And in this case again, we want to use this little button here. But apart from what we've done with the green screen where we have selected by color, which has worked very well for the green screen. Here we want to go with the fuzzy select tool. So therefore again, lift your left mouse button pressed and we switch over to the fuzzy select tool. With that one selected, my advice would already be that you'll increase the threshold in comparison to what we've selected in the last video. Because the lower the threshold here will be, the more clicks you need to make and get rid of certain areas. And you'll be left over with more and more of very small parts that you need to manually cut out afterwards. So of course, we don't also want this number to be too high. It just like e.g. if we make it 100 or so. And if I then click onto this picture, then you can see that already parts of the face will be included. And that's of course a number that is definitely too high. So maybe we'll go with, let's say 50 and start. Trial luck. Just click into this area and it's already looking very nice. We've still got all the parts of our body included so we can go ahead and hit Delete. And we have already removed the most parts of that wall. Next we could go just select the part here on the lower right side and then move ahead until then, reaching a good result. Now it's already looking very nice. But let me for now just introduce another helping layer. So here we could switch the color of that layer, but I'll leave it with black and then choose layer, new layer. We want to fill that layer in the foreground colors, so this will be that one. And then choose, Okay. And if we then grab that black layer and place it right below our wall picture, double-click onto the image. Then you notice that apart from the impression we had before, we definitely need to put in some more work to get rid of those gray areas are white areas that are still left in the picture. So we might continue again, select our wall picture and stick with the fuzzy select tool. Try our luck again. Maybe just select this part of the image. But as soon as you will see basically anything blink. And just like here, this will be the message that it will no longer work and we can't further delete any of those areas. So what we might do is now this looks like a good selection. So for this one we can still go with the delete button. And now let's maybe try and switch over to the select by color tool. Lower the threshold to let say ten, and try our luck with the color in this case. So this also looks like a part we can delete. So again, hit the Delete button, then maybe try to find some more areas just like this one again, hit delete. But in any case you'll come to a point where we will be left with some gray areas just like here. And those tools will no longer work as we're not working with a green screen. No problem what I normally do in this case, it's just switch, switch over again to the free select to take that one and start with a very rough shape around our body. Just like this. Then again, we'll later treat the areas here below our arms. So first of all, let's finish this mask, right-click and choose, select and invert again, then hit the Delete button and we've already deleted anything that's outside this mask. And now we want to increase the zoom factor to maybe about 50 per cent. Move down and draw some more masks that have a little more detail. I quickly switch over to another two, then back to the free Select tool to make sure that we're not working in the same mask. And then let's go and draw another one that is following along the pole over here in some more detail. And still as we only really need to focus on those lower parts, it will only be a matter of seconds. Again, we have the mascot already done, right-click and, or in this case we don't even need to right-click. We can only select Delete. So we got the party on the right side already deleted. And then one more time, let's draw another mask here on the left side. Just like that. And I think we won't even include the lower part of the body in our final thumbnail, but still let's make this one perfectly fine. So continuing on until we are arriving here on the lowest point of the image. And then quickly move back to finish that mask and again hit Delete. And here we are with a very nice looking result, just like the one we created with our green screen. Now, before rendering, what we need to do is switch off that layer or even delete that layer. So right-click here and choose Delete layer. And then we can also shrink our final image, just like we've done before. So choose the Rectangle, Select tool, draw a rough rectangle just like that. And right-click image and fit Canvas to selection. And with this one, perfectly looking fine, we go ahead and export. And of course we want to again make sure that we will render those transparent areas. And this can only be done in certain image file. So therefore, we will choose File Export S. And in this case, as our original file has been a JPEG file, we want to make sure that we will switch that file to be a PNG file. So here we want to select the phenotype, open up those different files, and move down until we will see P and G. So there we are. Then we'll hit Export. And we can then leave all the other selections here just as pre-selected hit Export. And this will create a nice image for us that we can continue working with in Canvas. So in any case, we have now achieved two really key out. Our person, either in front of the wall or just like before with the green screen. So now we can import those different images onto Canvas and continue setting up a nice thumbnail in that platform. So therefore, see you again in the next video directly in Canvas. 18. Preview of the final Thumbnail in Canva: So for this method as well, we've successfully gone through the first step, meaning that we are now looking at a perfectly keyed out main image, just like this one, which has been one of the examples that we considered in the previous videos. And now off-camera, I also treated the second example picture in front of the green-screen in the very same way, meaning that here we have this second picture. Also of course, perfectly keyed out with only using the software gimp. Now, with this emotion in mind, what I also already did was I created the complete thumbnail in Canva. And for this one, let's now imagine that we no longer own our very own psychology YouTube channel. But for now, we want to give some advice and purchase advice on electronic devices and maybe even create a test reports on laptops in particular. And that's what we did. We have a new video already created and this will consider the best laptops of the upcoming year. And with this as our main image, Let's move over to Canva and have a look at the final result, which will be this one. So you can see we got the main image right in the center with some color correction edit. Then again, I added this green border, as well as another border in our second color of the YouTube channel, which is red. And this one is a little more glowy. Then also we got, of course, the very clear and big texts here on the left side, best laptops 2023, as well as some additional elements and images here on the right side. In this case, what I did was I added some virtual laptops. But of course, if you really do those tests reports, then you might either introduce some of those real laptops into your main image or at least give those images here on the right side. But for now, that's not too important as you can, of course, simply replace those images. But what's really important is that you learn how to add those elements, how to create the text, how to add the domain image as well as the bolus and even placed this main image inside the very big laptop here in the background. So that's what I also do it you can see here there's a sharp border inside the laptop, while here at the top, our main image is looking out of that laptop. That's another element that we of course want to add, as well as the background texture, which has also been color corrected. And I added another batch here in our second color to give some more attention and create more interest. Because of course, the price is always one very important factor when it comes to buying a new laptop, apart from, of course, the performance of that laptop. So you can see, again, there's a lot going on. So therefore, let's directly get started with the next video and create this thumbnail in Canva. 19. Creating the Thumbnail in Canva: Background, text and shapes: Alright, so for this second version, the second method that we are using, I've mentioned that it will be completely free and you don't have to pay anything. And of course this remains to be true, but still I'd like to give you a quick introduction into Canva pro in advance, just so that you've seen it and quickly state what the advantages are. The options of that pro version will be just for matters of completeness. Not because I'm profiting in any way to be honest for myself. I'm also just sticking with the free version and it's just for you to see what this version is capable to do. So first of all, the price is €110 per year. If you are living in the Euro area. If you are living in the dollar area than it might be a very similar value as just right now, euro and dollar value the same. Now this version, first of all, we'll give you access to a lot more stock elements here it states 100 million premium stock photos or videos and more. And also the pro version will allow you to delete backgrounds just like we've done in GIMP. It's also stated here, I think remove image background instantly with the background remover, but S seen, you don't need that one as we will do so just using the free software gimp. So that's just for now stating what the camera pro version that will allow us to do. As I've said, you don't need that one. And I'm personally also not using the using the Canva pro version, but just stick with the free one. But what you will need to do is create an account here on Canva in order to be able to at least create a design. And of course, you'll have the advantage that you can save your designs, just like we will do. Create one design for the thumbnail and then stick with that consistent style and create our future thumbnails just out of this design that we will later on safe. So in order to do so, let's get back to the homepage of Canvas and start to create a design. So we'll hit this button here and then choose YouTube thumbnail or just search for that if you won't be recommended to do so. And now we'll hit that one and a new tab will open with the design tool. Now, here we can either start with a blank page, just like we can see on the right side, or choose one of those presets, templates, in this case here we've got some recently used as well as some more results. Or in the future, of course, what you wanna do. If you have your design safe, then here you'll find the folder thumbnails, and inside that folder, I already got the design element best laptops. Then of course, I will open that one, change my main image, change the texts, maybe change some additional elements. And I've got a new thumbnail created in just a matter of seconds. For now, let's go back to the templates that you all will be able to see. And maybe go ahead with this recently used one and start to create from that one. So I'll just select that. And right now it's got a German text which is stating to give some attention to vegetarian and healthy nutrition. But for now the text is not too important as we will, of course, change that one in a couple of minutes. To start with, let's go ahead and change the main image so we can just either click this image in first of all, deleted. Let's do so. Hit the Delete button, and then we move over to the uploads and find all the images that you have already uploaded. In this case, I already uploaded a lot of different images, just like e.g. this thumbnail, this main image that we already keyed out in GIMP in the previous videos. Of course, you will not be able to see that. So therefore, just hit Upload Files and you'll choose your keyed out image and will then be able to find that image, of course, here on the left side. So we'll take that one and we can either just move it over to create a new element. And if I move it to the front, then we can of course just freely move that image. Or we can just replace this image with another element like e.g. the background with the clouds here on the right side. If I move over the image, then you'll see here it will sort of lock. And if I let go there, then it will replace the image in the background. So that's the first step that we want to do for our main image and we will treat and consider this image later on, of course, more in detail to the color correction as well as the borders. But for now, let's go ahead and focus on the text as well as the background inside our thumbnail. And maybe we're directly start with this background image where the easiest or the most obvious option would be to just open up the background tab here on the left side. And there you can already see a lot of different texture images directly offered by Canva. When I have to say that a lot of those good-looking ones will be only available in the pro version. But what we could do is maybe search those backgrounds for, let's say, abstract. As I think this topic quite well, it fits our general thumbnail topic, which will be the test reports for the laptops. So let's maybe just browse through different abstract elements here. And maybe let's take that one, just select it and you'll see that this will be chosen as our new background images. And we can then of course, go ahead, hit this edit image button here and maybe just bring down the brightness. And just start to create a nice-looking background here. But for now, I don't want to use this tab. And therefore, with this background image selected, I want to choose the delete button again to just fully delete our background. But what I wanna do is use a texture that I placed in the course resources. So therefore, again, we'll open up the uploads tab. And here I got this texture already uploaded. So I'll just select it and place it right onto our image. Either just lock it onto the background or just freely placed it here and make sure that it will completely cover our thumbnail just like that. And then we want to right-click and choose bring to back or sent to beg. As of course, this will be the very last layer or the layer right in the back. There we are. We already edit this nice-looking texture. And what we wanna do next is give this one a little color correction to bring it more into the general colors of our YouTube channel, which just as an example in this case, will be green and red. So with this layer still selected, let's choose Edit Image. And we might want to start by just doing some general adjustments here. So what you can see here inside this adjusted effect are just three of the options, brightness, contrast, and saturation. But we can open up here by choosing c All. And then we can switch the tin to give this one a little more green look here. That will be the first option. But in this case, I want to do it with another effect. So let's go back. Here. It's already placed inside the recently used Tab. It will be the duotone effect. To find that one more on the lower side. Or of course, you can always just search for effects here. Thereby, of course also find the duotone effect. So let's just take that one and maybe start with cherry here. And then use the three options here, the three controls to open up some more details. And we want to switch the highlights to the main color of our YouTube channel, which will be this green one. And we want a background image to also be direct. So therefore, let's change the shadows to a black value. Then of course, you can also change the intensity, but in this case we want to stick with full intensity of one. And then we will apply this effect GIF the effect a little time to be added, might just take some seconds. And then our newly created background texture will be added into the background. And there we are. Now again with this one still selected, let's, let's make the whole background a little darker. So again, we close the search bar here and then open up the adjust element. Or in this case, we can see the brightness already stated here. So let's just bring down the brightness to, let's say about this value. And just like this, I think it fits quite well to our topic of doing those tests reports for the laptop. And in general, it fits quite well to, let say, electronic devices. All that we want to cover on our YouTube channel. So next in line, let's change the text. And for u, we get quickly rid of those German tanks. So we start by double-clicking and switch the text's content and we just write best laptops, 2023. And of course, for all those elements, you can always go ahead add or delete elements by either hitting this little button on the left side to introduce another text. Or of course just select any element and choose the delete button. And thereby you will delete one of those elements. And now what we wanna do is change the color scheme of those texts elements as well. So let's start with this one here. And in this case, this rounded rectangle in the background of the text is part of the text itself. And to be more precise, it's edit inside the effects here. So let's quickly select the effects here. And in this case, the background effect has been added. And together with the options here on the lower side, of course, this creates the soul of yellow rounded rectangle in the background of that text. Now we wanna go ahead and change the color to the main color of our YouTube channel. So again, choose grass green. And here we might do some more adjustments like e.g. change the radius of the roundness or change the spread. Maybe lower the general transparency of the background. But for now, I just want to stick with the standard value. So I'll undo my last steps here. And then I wanna go ahead and of course, also change the text color. And this will be done just like in any editing software. You know, here on top, you've got the text color and we'll change that one to white. Now feel free to browse the different effects here as they are. I think a lot of different effects that are looking quite good. Just like e.g. the splice one here are the echo, the lift, basically all of those elements then the young one are all looking good in certain ways of what you want to create. But for now, we want to do and stick with the background one. And now it's switched the colors. So I'll undo the last steps until it switches back to what we want to create just like that. Now with this element completely created, we want to just duplicate the style. And we can do so by opening up the three dots here, more. And we got this one here to copy the style. We do so and then just select the 2023 elements. There we go. We completely duplicated the style and we got that element sort of ready to go as well. And now for the laptop one, Let's invert the colors or at least invert the color of the font. So we'll bring up the text color here, switch that one too black. And again, open up the effects tab and we want to switch the background color to white. Then also what we want to do is increase the roundness. Just like we did for the other two elements. Like this, it should look quite fine. Now, let's move over this element here by just grabbing it also to the left side. And we will do the finest adjustments later on when we also place the main image in the middle. But for now, just notice that of course we can grab any of those four points to make it larger or smaller. And then of course we can grab the whole element and place it anywhere we want to. So that's it for the texts, and basically that's it for this whole video. And in the next one, we will consider the elements that have been added just like this rectangle here. As well as of course, focused on our main image and do some more adjustments for that one. So therefore, see you again in the next one. 20. Creating the Thumbnail in Canva: Main image and additional elements: Moving on and in this video, we want to consider, of course, the main image. Introduce the edge around that main image, and then later on also add some additional elements on the right side here to really create a nice-looking thumbnail. Now before we get into that, let's quickly consider those two elements that have already been added inside the template. First of all, we've got the rectangle here, the rotated rectangle, and then we've got this layer with dots of different sizes. Now let's start with the rectangle. And in this case I want to do it the easiest way. And that will be to just hit this little bin to delete that element. Now of course, you can always go ahead introduce different elements and shapes, but choosing this on the left side inside the Elements tab. So here we've got different shapes, lines and shapes. Like e.g. we've got arrows, we've got rectangles, circles, and so on. You can just grab those elements, place them onto your image, and then of course, do the same color corrections that we have seen, e.g. for our text element. But for this one, I think we don't need any further rectangles, but what we can let pass into our final thumbnail will be this layer of dots. I think it fits quite well to our topics. So therefore, what we want to do is just change the color of that one. But in general, we can leave that element and it has its well-deserved place in our final thumbnail. So we choose the color here. You can see it's a color gradients. So therefore, let's start with the blue one. Change that one to our main color, and then choose the lighter blue and change that to the second color of our YouTube channel. And you'll see that here from the bottom, there will be a lot more green. And then come into the top. We've got the gradient to the right. So like this, we want to go for it. And then, now let's move on and consider the main image. So first of all, of course we want to take that one and place it in the middle. Then you can already see it's currently placed right behind this layer of dots. So therefore we want to right-click and then bring it to the front. And we just grab one of those four dots in the corner to make it a little larger. I think next in line, it would be the best step to introduce the big laptop here already, this will be the most convenient way and we have a little less work afterwards. So therefore, just open up the elements again and we want to search for laptop. And let's see what Canva has got to offer for us. I think this one, we'll introduce it later as an additional element. But for now, let's go down with this little crown. You can see what elements are only available in the pro version. So we want to choose an element that is available in the free version. And I think this one fits quite well, so let's just place it onto our thumbnail. Then, of course, again, make it a larger just like that, and bring it in the middle. So first of all, we want to move this a little bit to the back behind the text as well as of course behind our main image. So therefore, right-click and send backwards. I think four times. So the last element, 2023, needs to be sent one more layer to the front. So we want to send backward the laptop, and there we go. And now what we want to make sure is that our main image is reaching out of the laptop here at the top area. Where here at the bottom, the laptop should really serve as a sharp border to that main image. So before we get into that, we need to introduce the edge around our main image. Because of course, that edge as well, it should be cut out by the laptops here at the bottom area. And in my experience, the edge effects is a little tricky. It needs some extra treatment because it's sort of replaces all the adjustments that we've done before inside our main image like e.g. any color corrections. But we can do so and give a live example to see if this is still the place. So let's go ahead and maybe start with the color correction. So with our main image selected, we'll choose Edit Image and just give some very obvious color correction here, like e.g. bring up the saturation to 100. And if we now introduce edges, which can be done with the shadows effect, mica is again, it has been recently used, but you can just search for that effect, apply it. If we then choose the glow effect, then you'll see that our image is sort of reset to its original. No more color corrections that we have already chosen, but basically start from scratch. So therefore, we want to start with the edge effects. So we open up the controls here. And then first of all, we want to change the color to the main color of our YouTube channel and then also bring down the blur. And bring up the transparency to 100, which to be honest, is a little bit against my intuition as I feel, 100% transparency means it should be completely invisible, but okay, in this case, 100 per cent. Transparency means we can fully see it and there's no transparency for this green edge at all. And then let's bring up the size just a little bit, maybe like that. And also make the whole image a little larger, maybe like that, and move it over. And of course later on we will cut this effect or this image here at the border of the laptop. But for now, let's go ahead and hit Apply. Now what this will do is set this whole image as our new basic image. And this has some advantages, but also some disadvantages. Let's start with the advantage, which is that now we can add another shadow effect because this green shadow is now part of our original image. So therefore, if we introduce the next shadow, it will be placed just at the border of this green edge. So again, we want to choose the glow effect. Then bring up the options. And in this one switches to the second color of our YouTube channel. Maybe let's stick with some blurriness here. Increase the size, just like that. And then again, either hit the corner here to make the image larger or you can also move up the scale here to make this image a little larger. Should be fine like this. And again, we want to apply and thereby have this nice double corner effect with first of all, the green corner in the main color of our YouTube channel, and then the red glowy corner in the second color of our channel. Now, let's continue with the disadvantage of those images or this image newly been set. And that is that if we now want to attack the colors inside that image, then also the corners will be adjusted. And of course that's not what we wanna do. As I can quickly show you. If I choose to edit this image again and do some adjustments like again, e.g. bring up the saturation. Then you'll see that not only the main image itself, but also the corner will be changed. And of course, we want this color to stick with the general color of our YouTube channels so we can no longer do those adjustments here. But what we need to do is introduce a little trick. And I'll show you about that trick in just a minute. But for now, let's begin and just cut this image here. So take this one here at the bottom and then move it over. Let's say about here. And then bring down the whole image right to the edge of our laptop. And you can do the perfect adjustment with only your arrow keys to move up, move down. And like this, it's looking quite fine. But of course, what we want to do, as mentioned, is do some color correction inside this main image. And in this case, what I'm just always doing is introduce another copy of this person. So therefore, let's open up the uploads again and then double-click our main image one more time. You'll see it will be edit, in this case two times, so you just need to click once. And then we'll bring up the size. First of all, it should of course, perfectly match the size of the image that we will then bring into the background. And then also we want to shrink it here from the bottom, just like that. And now my advice would be to really only use the arrow keys to move that image. Because if I move it over to the right side, you'll see that it will quickly ask to replace the image in the background, and that is not what we want to do. So therefore, let's undo that. Only use our arrow keys to perfectly move that image right in front of the second one. We need to make it a little larger. Just like this. And now we can really no longer see that basically we have added two copies of that image. Let's create a perfect border here as well, just like that. And now of course, what we can do as this image in the foreground has no edges, therefore, we can edit that image, dive into the color correction. First of all, definitely increase the contrast as well as the saturation to make myself look a little healthier. And then maybe also bring up the warmth just a little bit. But I think this is already looking quite nice. So that's basically the trick that I'm always using. I have a little struggle with this border effect itself. But as seen, it is very quickly done and therefore, we have now corrected the color individual, individually as well as introduce the border here, which still sticks to the main color of our YouTube channel. So that's it for this main image. And now to make it stand out even a little better, Let's introduce a screen for this laptop that can also be easily done by bringing up another element. So close the laptops here. But what we want to do is get into our lines and shapes and just bring up a little rectangle here. Starting at the upper left side of the laptop and then bring it down to the lower right side. Just like this. Now what we want to do is first of all, switch the color of that one, make it black, and then lower the transparency. So let's bring up the three dots here. And this one is opening up the transparency options. Lower that one to let say, 75% or so, and then move this element right behind, of course, the text element behind those two copies of our main image and also behind the laptop. So right-click and we want to send backward a couple of times. Now I've chosen a wrong element. So again, stick with that one. Send backward, Send backward behind the text elements. One more time. And now we need to send behind the laptop just like that. And we have added a nice little screen, which just makes our main image stand out a little bit more. Now, let's get into the additional elements. And maybe for this one, we want to add some virtual laptops. As I've mentioned before, if you are really testing objects and you've got those objects at home, then you might bring up the objects into your main image to create a little more trust inside the thumbnail. But for now, It's just as a purpose of demonstration. And therefore, let's bring up some of those elements that can be added here directly from Canvas. So again, I want to search for laptop. And then let's just get this one here right onto our thumbnail. Make it maybe a little larger and we want to change the color. So we leave the screen color here for blue, but we want to change the basic color of the laptop itself, make it green. And also this one here maybe make it a little lighter just like that. And then we create a copy of that laptop. So just right-click, copy and paste or use your, your Sim, your keyboard buttons control C and control V to create a copy. And for this one, Let's maybe make it grayish, just like that. And then move it backward behind the first laptop and then also rotated a little bit to create some dynamic. I think like this, It's already looking quite nice. Now let's add one more element to grab further attention and just create some more interest for our thumbnail. And that is, we want to introduce a batch with some dollar signs. Of course, the price is always grabbing attention. So let's search for batch. Here we will also find some nice elements in the free version of Canva and will directly take the first one, place it here on the lower right side, make it a little smaller just like that. And change this to the second color of our channel. Again, bringing up the colors here and choose the coral red. Just like that. And then we want to bring up a text at a textbook box and let's write a couple of dollar signs like that. And then also take the whole element, plays it right inside our batch. And I think this is a nice addition to our thumbnail to further grab some attention. Now let's maybe make this one here point to those laptops by adding an arrow. So again, we want to search for different arrows and maybe let's take this one here. Or even better. This has the wrong direction. Let's take that one. Rotate it. Change the color, of course, to our red color and make it a little smaller just like that. And thereby this dispatch here, we're nicely point to our laptops. So basically here we are. This is the thumbnail that we wanted to create. We have a nice-looking main image here with the person asking, what will be the best laptop? We have those sharp borders here at the bottom, with the laptop in behind, we have the screen edit of our laptop. We have some clear and bold text elements. And overall, I think a great looking thumbnail that definitely will catch attention. So that's it for this video. And in the next one, I'll show you how to save this as our template. And then how also be able to add some more adjustments for basically all the elements in one step, just like the adjustment layer will do for us inside After Effects. So therefore, stay tuned and we'll see again in the next one. 21. Creating the Thumbnail in Canva: Addition to Glow and final adjustments: Alright, so in this very last step, let me quickly show you how you can save this thumbnail as our general preset for all the future thumbnails. And then also you can make some quick final adjustments to all the elements inside this thumbnail, like e.g. at another final color correction at another individual effect to bring up your personal space or whatever, you want to apply it to all the elements inside this thumbnail. Now to start off, let's first of all renamed the thumbnail. We got the name here on top inside this box. So we would just want to click inside the box and switch it to, let's say, some preset. And you can not only do so inside this box, but also here, if you bring up the file options, you've got the name here right on top and can of course change it there as well. Now with this file option, Let's now go ahead and choose Save to folder. And we want to choose our projects. And in this case, there is already a folder named thumbnails, but you of course can go ahead create a new folder and just save this thumbnail inside the folder. And then you will find this folder here for any future creation. Just on the left side. Bring up that folder to open up this thumbnail. And then you can just select any of those elements, change the additional elements, change your main image, change the texts, and you've got a new thumb, basically in just a matter of seconds. So that's how you can use this as a preset. And now we want to render and save this file as an image file, because of course that's what we will upload them to YouTube. And we can do so by using this Share button here. Then just hit download. And for the file type, I'd suggest you stick with PNG. The size of course, is already perfect as this is a thumbnail preset. And then we choose download and you've got your image just on your PC that can of course, then be uploaded onto YouTube. And that's also the trick that I use to do some final adjustments because of course here we have all the elements as individual placements inside this thumbnail. But of course, if we download the whole image, then this image is basically just one layer. And we can then re-upload that image and take the whole image to do some final adjustments with that image. Of course, before doing so, really make sure that this year with the individual elements is what we want to save as a preset because they are, we want to change the individual elements in the future. While here of course, we only got one layer and we can no longer individually change e.g. the text. But for now as we only want to do some general adjustments, we want to take that and replace it with the thumbnail that we've already created. So therefore, let's choose just one element on the right side here, and then hit Control a to select all elements, delete those elements. Go ahead, delete the background, and then take this one here. Click onto it, enlarge, adhere to the corner. And let's for a second, just treat this as our newly created thumbnail. And now of course we can go onto the edit options. E.g. increase the general contrast. And it's very easy to notice that this, of course, will then be applied to all our individual elements that we have originally added to our thumbnail. Now for now, let's bring back the contrast to zero. But what you could also do is of course, at your individual spice in this way, like e.g. I've shown to you in one of my previous PowerPoint presentations, bring up one of these Bad TV settings here like e.g. rerun. This case it's a little strong, but you could make some further adjustments inside the Effect Options. Or maybe you want to switch and add another Prisma, like the chemical kit that's also been added in one of my previous PowerPoint presentations. And in this way, you can just take your time and add some individual spice to your final thumbnail. So for now I want to cancel this, stick with this as our final thumbnail and thereby we can now finish off with the whole canvas and Gibbs section to give a little quick repetition, what we learned is how to key out the main image inside the free software GIMP. Then of course, upload this image to Canva and start to create a nice-looking thumbnail with Canva. So again, we've got these clean and bold texts, just like we've seen to be successful inside the theoretical part, we get some additional elements here on the right side. We've got this nice look in a batch here to grab even more attention. And we also added the big laptop right in the background of our main image. While the main image is reaching out of that laptop here at the top area. And then we even edit another screen of this laptop to further enhance the effect. At the very beginning, we introduced the texture here in the background and completely changed the color scheme of that background image. So odd and odd, I hope this was interesting for you and therefore, let's finish this part and move on with the next video. 22. Thank You: You have arrived at the end of this YouTube thumbnail design course. And I'd really like to thank you once again for choosing this course, hopefully also for participating. And what I also hope is that you could take away some interesting aspects from both the theoretical as well as the practical part of the course. Now if this is the case, then I would be really happy and it would be very, very helpful if you could give this course a positive rating, maybe include a small text as this really is a very important aspect to me as a teacher here on Skillshare. Also, of course, feel free to recommend the course to your friends and family or check out any other of my courses here on the platform. Thanks a lot for doing so now, all the best to you personally and of course, a lot of success for your very individual YouTube channel. See you and bye-bye.