In this tutorial we will learn how to make a simple YouTube video thumbnail, using the free software GIMP.
Here are some cool examples of custom YouTube thumbnails i found on YouTube:
1
Open a background picture
Open a picture (mostly a screenshot from your video) in GIMP.
For this tutorial i will use a random picture.
Start with a large enough picture to make your custom YouTube thumbnail. To make a good thumbnail, it must be as large as possible (usually 1280 x 720 px or bigger) and have a 16:9 aspect ratio.
2
Click Text tool
Click the
A
icon to start the text tool, in order to add text in the picture.
3
Enter the video title
a. Click somewhere in the picture, then you should see a text box appearing. b. Type the text you want to add in your YouTube thumbnail (mostly the video title). For this tutorial i will just enter
MY CUSTOM THUMBNAIL
Make the thumbnail's text more easy to read by writing it all in CAPITAL LETTERS
4
Choose a font
Enter the first letters of the font you want to use, then you should see a menu with all fonts available from your computer. Here i will use
Arial Bold
.
If you don't know any font name, just enter "a" or "b" so you can still choose a font.
5
Expand text box & enlarge font
a. Expand the text area by moving the gray boxes around the text area. b. Select all the text. c. Use the up arrow button to enlarge the font until it covers a big part of the picture.
The bigger the text is, the easier it will be to read, especially when thumbnails are displayed in a small size, like in the related section
6
Choose a color
Choose a color by clicking the color button.
Choose a color that is not very much used in the picture, the text will be easier to read!
7
Discard text information
Transform the text layer into a simple layer by right clicking on it, then
Discard Text Information
.
8
Expand layer
Expand the layer's dimensions by right clicking on it, then
Layer to Image Size
9
Duplicate layer
Now we need to make a black border around the text. For this, we need to duplicated this layer.
Duplicate the layer by right clicking it, then
Duplicate layer
.
10
Make selection from text
We use the text to make a selection, so we can work on it to make the black border around the text.
Do it by right clicking the layer, then
Alpha to Selection
.
Be sure to be focused on the second layer, which will be used to make the black border, so it must be under the first layer (which will stay orange)
11
Grow selection
To make the black border, we will just use the text layer we previously duplicated, but in bigger size. To make the same text in bigger size, we made a selection from it in step 10, now we need to grow it.
To grow the selection, just click
Select
then
Grow
12
Enter value
Enter a number. Here I use
15
.
If you don't know, you can try a number, and if it's not enough, click
Edit
then
Undo Grow Selection
, and try again with a higher number.
13
Fill in black
Now we are ready to fill the selection with black paint!
1
Click Fill tool
2
Select Black color
3
Check
FG color fill
4
Check
Fill whole selection
5
Click anywhere in the selection to fill it.
14
Export your thumbnail
Export your thumbnail by clicking
File
then
Export As...
.
Your thumbnail exported file must be under 2MB in order to upload it on YouTube.
Export your thumbnail as a JPEG (.jpg) image so it will be lighter than a PNG image, to remain under the 2MB YouTube limit for thumbnail uploads.