How to Make YouTube Thumbnails on Your Phone

I'll show you how to create YouTube thumbnails on your phone

So thumbnails are probably the most important thing for your YouTube videos besides your actual video

So this is what people are going to use to decide if they want to watch your video or not

YouTube will put your thumbnail and title in search results on the homepage, suggested videos

things like that where people are going to decide after seeing your thumbnail, do they want to watch your video or not

So you need to clearly represent what your video is about in just one image

and hopefully it creates some curiosity where people decide to watch your videos

I'd encourage you to spend twice as much time as you're currently doing working on your thumbnails

So what you're going to need to think about is how do you clearly represent what your video is about

Ideally, have a picture of yourself with some type of expressive look on your face, creating

some curiosity so people want to click on your video and watch it. You don't need a fancy camera or expensive software

You can do it all for free on your phone and that's what I'm going to show you how to do today. So the very first step is getting the picture of you that you're going to use for your thumbnail

I don't actually end up using photos. I take a video of myself because I'm doing this alone

and I find it easier to do it that way as opposed to trying to take 50 pictures of myself and then finding the right image

So why don't we get started making a thumbnail? Now I'll show you how I get the image that I'll use for the thumbnail

So step one, something to set my phone up on, my trusty switch pod

Then I need my cell phone. Let's get the camera going in the wide angle

Start recording and then let's put it like so. So, okay, so now all I just need to do is make whatever face that I'm thinking about for the thumbnail

Something like that is probably good enough. So now why don't I start recording my phone screen so you can follow along there

All right, so here's the video that I just recorded. So I can actually pause it and be like, and then just..

Slowly go through the part. Oh, that actually, how about that? Does that work for you guys

So I can just take a screenshot of that like so. Okay

So we have the image of me that we're going to use for the thumbnail. The next thing, if you've seen our thumbnails before

there's a blue background, not this gray wall. So we need to remove the background

Unfortunately, Canva doesn't let you do this in the free version. We use Canva Pro so we could do that there If you want to try Canva Pro I put a link down below in the description where you can try it for free for 45 days and do everything without going to the website I going to show you This is our affiliate link so we could earn a small commission if you end up signing up for Canva but at no extra cost to you

But don't worry, I'm going to show you how to do this for free. You can just go to your web browser and go to remove.BG

So it's going to look something like this. The next step would be to upload an image

And so you could take a photo or from your photo library, we have the screenshot that we want to use

You can see that I was playing around with this earlier. We're going to use this image right here

Go to choose. It's going to think for a second and any second now

Maybe. Wait for it. Here is a picture of me, no great background

So I can download this. The screw thing here, I was playing around with this earlier so I can go to open in

And for some reason it's not showing up to let me just add it to my images folder

So kind of what I ended up doing is saving it to Google Drive

Then once it's in Google Drive, I can download it, and then I'll show you the next step

So let's save it to my drive, save here, upload. I wish there was a quicker way to do this

And then so what I can do now is if I go into Google Drive, and then the latest image would be this one

and then let's send a copy. to save an image. Okay, there

We have the image on my phone now. So the next step is to go into Canva

So everything I'm going to show you in Canva now that we have the background remove

you can do with the free version of Canva on your phone or on your computer

So just type in the search. You could type in YouTube thumbnail. They have all these designs here

Some of them have way too much text for me, like this one down below, dazzling desserts

No one can read the text up What we're going to do is just start with a blank slate

So what we're going to do here, we don't want that. So here's just a white screen

The next thing we want to do for ours, we have our color palette saved, and here is our blue

And then from there, if you click on the plus sign right here, and then go to uploads

You can see some of the other pictures I was playing around with earlier Upload Media Photo Library Here the image with no background Add The one below with my headphones on is a little more fun but we going to use this one today

And so what we want to do is just, obviously that's kind of small

So we can just stretch the corners, move it around a little bit

There, that's pretty good. As far as for me, the other thing is if you click on the image, here you can go

go scroll around to adjust and then you can play around with the brightness, maybe just a touch

brighter, let's say. And then the next thing would be maybe a touch more contrast, something

that kind of pops out. You want to be thinking about when you create thumbnails as people

are going to be also watching your YouTube video, seeing your thumbnails on their phone

So it's kind of good that if you create on your computer or you create it here, at least

you're thinking about people seeing the thumbnail on your phone. And then you can see maybe, you know, do I want to adjust the saturation

It's something to just kind of play around with over time. One of the things with the free version of Remove.BG is it's not a super high quality image

Again, they're trying to get you to pay to get a high quality image of this. But I'm showing you a workaround of the best way to do this without costing you anything

So image of me is okay. Maybe not a little less bright. Let's say that

And then from here, so that's done. And then what we're going to do is hit plus

and then let's add the text. Add a heading and then Let's say maybe it's about get YouTube and then we don't want this all on one line

Let's hit enter here something like that. Let's move it along the side something here

Maybe we want the text to be a little bit bigger and then if we want to change the font down below

so open sands extra bold let's use say work sands. works sands. That looks good. And then the other thing is we probably want to have the

YouTube button to add a little bit of color and also to be very, very clear, hey, this is about

YouTube. So I've already uploaded the YouTube button that I got from YouTube's website. I think

it's like one of the first things that I've actually uploaded to Canva. So we can shrink that

down by just dragging the corner. So if you see the little dotted lines all over the place

so the solid line hey this is the middle of this actual image This is actually the middle of the text box up above And so you can go kind of aligning stuff like so If it about like that one of the

other things, if you saw our get a hundred subs for YouTube, we've put these little lines along the

side, just kind of making it look like there's motion. This is happening quickly. So if you wanted to

add, say, other types of elements, so you can go to elements here. And so if you want a race car, a circle

They have a version of the YouTube button. They have lines, all these other shapes and stickers that you can add

I just want to add a couple lines. So you can see there's this dark black line

I want it to be a little bit thicker so I can drag this maybe like so

I don't want it to be black. I want it to be white. And then this is way too long

And so what I want to do now is zoom in. And then I also need to make this level

So the other thing, so if I want to copy it, then I can hit make two copies like so

And so maybe the bottom one is a touch longer. The middle one is the shortest

And then maybe this one is a little bit longer as well. And so you can see, you know, some of the things with this is if you're doing this on your computer

it's a little bit easier to do stuff like this, kind of align stuff horizontally and

things that I'm trying to, you know, play around with right now. And then what you'll see is, you know, obviously you want to have these lined up

up. So let's say we want the right side of them to all be aligned. So I can click on one

and then wait till I see the pink line there. And I think this one might be a little bit off

So and then zoom out again. So get YouTube subs. Oh, fashion. Why don't you tell me that I

can't even spell fast? How did that happen? Fast like that. That's what I was trying to do

Okay, so get YouTube subs fast. You see the little lines of like zoom, zoom, this is happening quickly

of me and that's essentially what you need to do to create a thumbnail. So if you're

all done with the design, you can click on the little download button right here, preparing your

design, thinking for a little bit. And so you can see up above, it said save to your camera roll

So if you want to learn how to properly upgrade your videos, which includes uploading a thumbnail

image, check out the video right here. If you want to see all the videos we have to help you

run YouTube in 2021, check out the playlist below. Hope to see you in another video. Bye bye