Transcripts
1. YouTube Thumbnails x Photoshop - Welcome: now, as a YouTube of the most powerful tour we have to create a successful YouTube channel is stopped now is having a thumb. Now that stands out, draws viewers in it basically put you on the path to a successful YouTube channel. And in today's class, I'm gonna be teaching you everything I've learned over the last four years. Building up my channel from a zero subscribes to 41,000 subscribers on zero views to seven million views. I'm teaching you everything I've learned in that long, long 34 years of building on my YouTube channel in just probably a 25 minute class. So if you do go on to enjoy a lever of you, let me know what you think. And so, yeah, in this class, I'm gonna be teaching you all of the elements you're gonna need to use in order to create successful thumb. Now it's now there is so much stuff going to be sharing that I wish I knew the start, but it took me years and years and years to figure out I what elements of photo shop I need to use a more elements I don't to create like professional thumbnails of quality on ones that stand out. And if I don't know, in this stuff of the start when I started my channel, I would have saved so much time, So much effort. Yet just if you have starting YouTube channel, stay tuned in this class, it's gonna be worth it. I guarantee by the end of this class, you're gonna be creating high end quality thumb. Now is that with attractive views in and I'll also be saving you so much time of just searching on the Internet of what you need to do to get certain effects. So if you're ready for this, let's get it done. But first up, make sure you check out the class project where you get to add it to some now that I've previously created, and then you can kind of compare between what I did is a youtuber on what you did in order to, like, attract viewers and stuff like that. So I feel like that's a great thing for you to do after the class is finished.
2. Case Study: Successful YouTube Thumbnails: so welcome to Class one. Now as a youtuber, your thumb now is such a great tool for drawing in viewers. And essentially, I want to say before we get into photo shop that the right thumb now starts with the right idea. And as you can see on my screen now, all of these thumb now is a preplanned. I had an image in my head of what I wanted. The thumb now to be now is the way to go about making good thumb. Now, for example, my recent domino exam day, you can see that I'm talking about my exam and how it went in the top left corner. I've got a piece of text saying Exam day to inform the viewers that it's exam they can see in the background on my computer screen. I have an exam paper open to show once again that I'm doing the exam. I'm writing down on my ipad something. Now this I think viewers by association assume that I'm writing down my exam, and then my face kind of represents how I'm struggling with the exam because I've got that emotional charge where I'm kind of looking very concerned on. Once that all merges together, it creates a sense of curiosity, which draws viewers into the video. You can see in this one right here. My university exams will be done online, in quarantine and in the thumbnail. I've got a screenshot of an email that you can't quite make out what that is, But you can see that there's information that I'm gonna be talking about in the video in this screenshot on. As viewers want to know about this, they click on the video and see by their so curious about what this email says, because I've circled it. Put question marks there. Let's take a look at my most popular videos on how the thumb now, as I use drawing in viewers to watch the video. So my most popular video ever is a McDonald's one. Now you can see in this McDonald's video. It's a very basic time. Now there's done really well. Now you can see that the green background is really stands out and with a thumb now you really have to know your audience, and you have to match this thumb now style with the style of the video. So, for example, in this McDonald's video. I knew that I was catering to the younger audiences, and subsequently I wanted something that stood out on a green background really stands out amongst all of the other videos in this very rare case, a green background work. Now it doesn't always work, and sometimes it can look a bit childish further on in this image. You can see that I'm holding a McDonald's bag now. This signifies to the audience that I've got the free food, which I'm talking about. McDonald sign. I basically I'm showing that, you know, I'm here at McDonald's. I've got the food from Monopoly on, and this is how you do it. So that was really kind of the idea behind that thumb. Now I knew my audience. I knew how to attract their attention, and I proved to them in the thumb. Now that I had the food moving onto a slightly more mature audience, my fibula Upton Park video. Now this one, you can see that I basically decided that my audience is going to be football fans. They're gonna be slightly older. There's no fancy green and California's in the background. There's no even any logos or anything like that. I just decided the best. That way for me to kind of get a good thumb now was to at the time, stand in front of the goal because the gold signifies kind of, you know, I made a feeble pH. I'm playing football. Hold a ball to say that I'm actually playing football again. Being in the background of West Ham's kind of stadium, I needed to prove that I was a West Ham on the colors on the stadium seats kind of dip. Proved that. So before I even got into photo shop, I had this idea of kind of what kind of I needed to do within the video to get the right image that I could then edit in photo shop on have a successful thumb now. So the first step to a having a great YouTube done now is planning out ahead of time. What you kind of want the thumb now to be now, of course, you can play around with stuff and words and fonts and calculators. For example, in a photo shop
3. How to Choose the RIGHT YouTube Thumbnail Image: All right. So welcome. Back to class to now. I've moved on to this corner right here, So you guys can see the whole of photo shop. Now we've opened photo shop on. Let's say that there are several images. You think that a good for the thumbnail of the video. Now, in this class, we're gonna talk about how you can decide straightaway. What thumb now is going toe work best for your video. And you don't don't have to mess around typing and customizing and editing every single image you've taken that you think is maybe going to be good for the thumb now because that honestly takes up so much time. It's not the most efficient way to do it on. It's quite simple to determine early on what thumb now is going to be best for a video. Now, let's say I've got three images open here. You've got one here of me clearly doing some sort of pose, or I've got one here of me thinking on. Then finally, I've got one of me kind of logging. What time now is gonna look best once it's edited Now, straight away with this one right here. I'm looking, you know, it doesn't really stand out. Let me zoom out to see excuse. Zooming out is key to determine what your thumb now is gonna look like on YouTube. Because obviously on YouTube or the images are a lot smaller and they're gonna be very small. One viewer see them, so it has to attract viewers attention, despite being very small on when I look at this, I think you know what? It's not bad. The camera stands out a lot, but the image itself I don't know it's just a bit bland is just a bit bland, You know, it's not warm. It's not drawing me in. Now let's move on to this one. You know what? This one has a bit of potential. My positioning. I'm in the slight left of frame. I could maybe yes and text around. You know this right hand side, maybe a tiny bit in the left hand side. There's some blue there, the blue colors Milik. Pretty nice, but I don't know what it is. This just this time now seems like it's to every day. This seems more like an Instagram photo, no thumb now type of thing so once again, I'm not too keen on this one, and then we move on to this one right here. Now this one's very interesting. Now this one's got a lot of potential to be a good edited photo, because all of the colors in the thumb now are roughly the same. There's no like bright blue or there's no bright yellow in contrasting areas. There's no super light bits or no super dark bits, whereas relatively here, everything super bright and maybe a bit overexposed. Relatives of this one is really like Here's a bit darker here, you know It could work, but it's posing a lot of problems, whereas this one is already got, like a nice sort of glow on my face, the lights nice. Regardless of what's happening in the image, the image itself is so much more kind of warm bright, and it just looks I don't know what it is. You get used to it. You could just tell that this image is going to be a lot better for editing. Understanding what images air gonna be good for editing is going to save you so much time and over was just a nice plane. Constant image on a constant image is great for editing. You know, you can see in these images that the one that really stands out is this one here. And it's hard to kind of explain this Jew after a while of editing photos, you will pick up the snack. So just be aware of when you're choosing your thumbnails. And as you go through this process yourself, just think about OK, This works well. This doesn't work. Well, this works well. This doesn't work well, and you start building up this thing's knowledge bank of what you need to do in order to create a good thumb now.
4. Editing The Thumbnail in Photoshop (KEY!): Okay, so welcome to class three of mastering thumb now is for YouTube. Onda, obviously in last step. So close to we looked at the right image for a thumb. Now, I mean talked about how this one right here was the best one out of three I showed you purely because the nice, even light distribution, the nice, warm background and the sharpness of focus of me relative to the background. Now, obviously, now we customize this image on this will really help it stand out when you're kind of browsing on YouTube and stuff like this. Now, originally to customize an image on for two years I did this. I used to mess around with this adjustments tab, the brightness, the contrast all up here. And then, after about hours of researching, I discovered this tab on this tab is under filter and to you click filter. Then you click on camera Raw filter. Now, as soon as you click on this, it brings up this whole menu where you can easily increase decrease exposure. Contrast highlights texture. Andi, for now, every single thumb now that I make on YouTube, I literally just used this menu and then I obviously add text and stuff like that that will talk about at a later date by this menu on this super easy to access, super easy to mess around with. This is the absolute godsend of a menu. So let's say you've opened up this menu. Andi, you're now ready to customize the chosen image for your thumb. Now, now straightaway on here. All it is is a nice play around. So when I look at this image, it's not too dark. It's not too bright. I might just click auto, see what happens. All right, so auto makes it a bit more saturated in a bit nicer. I quite like that, however, is still not kind of sharpened. Focus. It won't stand out enough. So I'm gonna mess around. Yeah, tired doesn't need to be brighter. Maybe a tiny bit. So exposure makes it darker or lighter. I could then mess around with contrast, and as you can see, same sort of thing contrast darkens parts or or lightens parts we can move on to highlights , which makes the whites brighter. I'm not sure if the whites need to be that much brighter. To be honest, some believe that down low? Well, then go shadows that you can see kind of change how dark certain parts of the image become . Now I often find that when making a YouTube thumb. Now, this really is key now, having low since your low shadows I don't like. But having almost no shadows, I feel really makes the image stand out once you make a few other adjustments. So let's say for this example, I'm going Teoh, I'm going to Yes, I'm going to leave shadows on 100. I'm going to also slight. I don't be overexposed on my face. I'm slightly going to lower the whites on then blacks, I don't know. I don't have fade out the image by increasing the blacks too much, and I don't want to be too dark by lowering them too much. So I believe them about there. So once I've messed around enough to the point where I'm happy with the image from the top mitt from the middle while mainly messing around the shadows, I then move on to texture, clarity and D. Hayes. Now what this does, it really just kind of sharpens the image and makes it stand out and I don't know what it is. But as soon as you add kind of texture along with shadows, maybe a bit more clarity, it really just to me makes the image stand out as a thumb. Now and then, I might add a bit of de Jesus. You can play around and see what these do, but to me, that looks pretty good, very sharp image that's really going to catch people's attention from the offset. So if it was very faded, it might not stand out, and it might look a bit overly shop or around my face and stuff when you're close up. But when you zoom out on on YouTube, everything is zoomed out. It makes a big difference because people can clearly see from the low rez, low, pixelated, small image what is happening. What is a sharp on YouTube, which really does make a difference. You can see right there. The image instantly has gone from just a plain old, boring kind of blind image, to if I just redo this to this, and to me, that stands out so much more, and all I have done is play around with this one filter So I clicked. Filter. I went camera raw filter and I played around with the buttons on by playing around with it . It makes such a huge difference that this is this is it now that's it before. And I just think it makes such a big difference. I wish I learned that so much earlier on in my YouTube career.
5. Resizing the Thumbnail in Photoshop: now in last class, we looked at how to customize the image to make it really stand out. Now, in this class, it's gonna be a very, very sure one. And it is essentially about cropping or re sizing the image. Now, once you've got the right dimensions up for a thumb. Now the easiest way to change the image, size and stuff like that is not to crop it because that water and changes the dimensions, you need to upload the image to YouTube in by So just free transform the image on the screen right now to resize the images, you simply press edits at the top and then scroll down to free transform. And then once that it's highlighted, a rectangular box appears around the edge on. Then you can increase or decrease the size of the image to suit your needs. Now, in this case, the original image. There's a lot of dead space in the top left hand corner, a bit too much space between my head on the ceiling, and I might want to kind of increase the size off the of the image. Just there's less this less dead space in the corner Onda. Obviously it was. Stand out more. If I'm bigger in the image of what I'm doing stands out more, I'm gonna increase it to about this size. Here it's a bit bigger stands out mawr. And when I kind of, you know, zoom out compared to what it was before You can see that by me going backwards. Then it stands out more once free transform that I'm a bit bigger. So I really think that making the image that right size by free transforming, as I just showed you, is a key way to stand out on YouTube and to attract more viewers. So that was very quick free transformation video.
6. Adding Text to the YouTube Thumbnail!!: so so far, I've taken you through the process of having an idea, getting the right image, choosing the right image on subsequently, re sizing it on editing it. Now what you want to do next is probably add text to the image to convey information to create more curiosity on the way to do that is simply by heading over to the left hand bar , clicking T clicking on the screen, where you want to tie the text and then typing the text. It's very simple. The text you want to type really has to convey information about the video on Go side by side with thumb now. So in this case, you can see that I'm looking at a piece of paper. I don't know what the video is by. Let's just say it was about me who's a maths genius. Let's say I'm not, but let's say that then I might just say Meet the maths genius Ondas. Soon as you type something like that, it goes side by side with the fact that I'm really staring at a piece of paper on. I could be doing some math now. It does look pretty clean. There was a bit of that space up here, but I filled it in with text, and it really adds to the image now. Sometimes you might find that the distance between the two lines of text once you've tied them is far too high, because on auto, sometimes it gives a massive gap. Now, to change this, highlight the text head over to this menu by here. And if it's if it's on auto type in a number and see how that changes it. So my type in 70 is too close together now. 150. Perfect. Once you've done this, you can then further mess around with, like, underlining it or something like that. So highlighted again on you could underline it. You could put a line through it. You can do loads of stuff by think for YouTube done now, because from now is especially for beginners. This is what we need a layer of text now to make the text really stand out, you might want to add a shadow. Now, to add a shadow to text, simply highlight it. Go over to the layer where the text is double click or right click or you know and click Rast Arise layer. Then once this rest arise, that ends up looking like this. If you double click the layer once it's rest arised, it brings up this menu on this menu can click drop shadow on Play around with it, and it basically makes the text stand out even more now. Normally, I don't want a shadow too big. I don't the distance too big. I like it. Is the a nice black kind of shadow on it on? It really helps that you know the text standout, especially from a distance. As I was saying earlier on, that is normally Why do just mess around with a drop shadow? But you can add like an outer glow pattern overlay. You can add loads of stuff that is play around with it, get a feel for it. But in a basic YouTube done now guide, I would say All you want to do is add text at a shadow to it. And then, if we were to zoom out, you can see that all of a sudden the thumb now does look a bit better now. Once you've rest arised the layer, you can't really change the text size or anything like that, but you can free transform the layer. If you head over to edit free transform, you can then once again adjust the text size to get the kind of effect you want on. To me, that text looks pretty good now.
7. Adding Emojis, Arrows and logos to the YouTube Thumbnail!: All right, ladies and gents, welcome back to another class Now. In last episode, we talked about adding text and adding shadow Now for this video and this idea that we made up in our heads, we decided this was the appropriate kind of layout. So far. Now, a few final touches you might want to add to your thumbnail is adding logos, arrows and emojis. They're very common things to do. Obviously this principle kind of extends throughout the whole of any concept or idea you might have. Now, let's say I wanted to get a logo. Let's say it was a university logo. I would go on Google. I would type in the logo name that I wanted, and then I would type in PNG or transparent after that. Now what that means is that the background of the image you're going to be saving is actually transparent, and this is kind of represented here by this kind of checkered background. Now you know it's transparent and it's gonna work well, if there's this checkered background and if when you press save image as it will save it as a PNG, so you can see I've got up in logo here. I've got up a red arrow here, and I've got up a shock to motor here. Now I'm going to save all of these and then use them in the thumb now. So let's go and do that. Or I ladies and gents, so you can see right here. I've got open all of the arrows Thean emojis and the logo on. I'm gonna copy and paste them over to this thumb now and play around with them to further enhance the image. So to copy and paste the arrow over here, you press edit copy, and you can see the short cut there as well. Then when you go over to the image, you want to paste the arrow onto press, edit, then paste on. Then it pops up on because we've got the transparent image. There's nothing in the background, is just the arrow. Now I think for an image like this, I'm going to point the arrow to the paper, you know, give it that bit of kind of Oh, maths genius. He's working on something. What is it? That sort of kind of curiosity factor. I'm gonna add that in I'm I'm also gonna do the same copy and paste e emoji over. I just use the short cut there. Andi, I'm gonna put it below below the arrow to kind of showcase that. Whatever I'm working on on this paper is crazy. And then finally, I'm gonna add this university logo here just to show that you know this guy I'm a bit of a genius, you know, I've got I'm I'm thinking this corner here is pretty nice because I don't distracted from I don't again the way of the computer. Yeah, I'm gonna go up here and add this logo here. I'm going to double click on this to bring up the drop shadow menu, and I'm gonna change the color of the logo by adding a cup cover color overlay. I'm gonna change it from whatever it was toe white, and then I'm gonna add a drop shadow like I have previously done. You'd obviously play around with this sort of thing to get your style to make things stand out Like the text here. The forint isn't the greatest, but everything else is fine. And I just use that fun to showcase how everything works. But you can see kind of how you go about building up a thumbnail on YouTube.
8. The Final Touches - Branding and Standing Out: now for the final episode of this class where I'm talking to you about how you can make great you truth. And now, as a beginner on YouTube and in photo shop, I want to talk about a few other tools that you might find useful for making your image stand out in the 1st 1 is the rectangular tour. Now, if you head over down here to this menu here on select rectangle tal, you can then draw rectangles behind or over your text as it may be so, Carly, I've got a black rectangle on and I'm gonna highlight just over the text on what this stars . It creates two rectangles, as you can see in the bottom right here on day at the moment is blocking out my text. But if I drag and drop them because photo shop is very much lay everything, we'll do our drag up the text above these black boxes in the order a photo shop and all of a sudden we can see there that the text is highlighted behind these black boxes on you zoom out and it creates an even mawr kind of stand out sort of feel to the image, and that is another great tool that is very easy to do for beginners on can really help the image stand out. Now you can change the color of doing this by selecting this box here, which is kind of really useful. Another great thing I like to do on thumb now is to really give it. Your kind of unique taste is to, let's say, select the base image on, then go up here to this sort of lying tall on. Do you want to select this one here? The middle one? It's called polygonal, less less suitable, and you might want to chop our tiny corner of the video on Put your logo onto. So if I kind of draw around the triangle of the area that I want to disappear and then press the backspace or delete button, it disappears. Then if I had a signature color, let's say, or a signature logo, I could then get the pain buckets all select it. Change the color to, let's say, green Andi. I could then add and fill that in to give it my signature kind of look. However, I wouldn't use Green in this case, I would use probably black or white, just cause I think it looks a bit nicer. Andi Yeah, I would do something like this to finally make the image stand out, except I would normally do it in this top left hand corner with Logo's Now as well as this . They're a waste that kind of via layering that I'll cover in a more in depth photo shop class for YouTube. Basically get text to go behind my head, to change the color of the background without changing the color of me and to make certain objects stand out. And I think that is a great tour on a great thing to do once you've mastered the basics of having the right base image, so I'll be covering that in a class very soon. But I thought was a final kind of round off to this class. I'll give you two other things to think about the whole kind of adding your branding to the side of the thumb now and then, adding a colored box behind the text
9. Recap and Conclusion - Thank you: thank you for watching my class. This is the conclusion of it. I hope you learned a lot about how you can use photo shop on Do you know, create professional looking YouTube? Done now is that would draw viewers into the video. Now, obviously, it takes a long, long time to master these sort of things. But this is a great guy. You know what you need to be looking out for on what tours you need to use in photo shop. Because photoshopped can be very complicated. There's loads of things you could be doing on there. But if you stick to kind of what we said, the general formula for using camera raw filter is a great way to, you know, mess around with the exposure, the lighting, the shadows, the saturation and that can really help make a thumb. Now stand out. If you were looking at branding, adding something in the corner aligned and adding a logo on top might be a great way to do , you know, t put your signature twist on it text as well, putting information in the thumb now using Photoshopped to make the text stand out. And that is what you need to do to start creating great YouTube, Thunder House now arrows as well or a great way to draw attention to an object or highlight something in the thumb. Now, we discussed that as well. So I think in this class I've given you the starting in the building blocks for how you can create YouTube. Thumbnails on it took me so long to get to this level of thumbnail creation, which is still, you know, pretty decent. So I hope you guys did enjoy. Please do leave a review. I like Let me know what you think. Make sure if you do want to see a more professional, more complex photo shop and you tripped on our class full of the channel because I will be bringing one out very soon. I've already created a beginner YouTube quick start guide, so make sure you check out my other class on that on. I'll be doing in Adobe premiere pro class very soon when I teach you all about my editing workflow and how you can ultimately save time, because the biggest thing with YouTube is about efficiency on making you stand out and get at the same time, of course. So subscribe. If you want to see them classes. I hope you have enjoyed Andi. Be sure to check out the class project where you can edit the thumb. Now that same fell. Now that I've been editing throughout this class on, you can compare what you thought would be a great film. Now to what I did on kind of See if there's any similarities, any differences will have a play around with it yourself that from now on, see if you can make it better than mine. I'd love to see what you can do with it in the comments down below on. Yeah. Thank you very much. Watching the class piece.
Dylan Reeves-Fellows ⭐️, YouTuber & Professional Editor
