How To Make Youtube Thumbnails with Canva

Creating YouTube Thumbnails w/ Canva

In today's episode, I'm going to show you guys how I create my YouTube thumbnails with Canva. And I'll walk you through the different features that you can use with this awesome tool.

So, let’s get started!

First thing is to find the highest resolution image that you can find, I am using the Canon EOS Rebel and if you are editing with a guest, figure out what your templates are going to look like. There are various stock images on Canva that you can choose from.

Remove background

This is very easy, select your high resolution photo and drop in on your workspace. And to remove the background, go to effects, and click remove the background. By the way, sometimes it doesn't do very well, if there's not a flat static background behind it.

So one of the things that I did is I used a black background and added it a brick wall for a backdrop. I like to add some kind of aesthetic that I can control. The reason being is that I strive for consistency with my thumbnails.

Glow Outline

In this example, as you can see with the image of Mike Robbins, we’ve got the glowing outline in the back. If you want that effect, which I think adds a whole other dynamic,  the fastest way is:

1. Duplicate the image and put it right on top of the other first.

2. Go to effects and select the duotone option.

3. Click the image again so you can pick a specific color code.

4. Stretch the image with the duotone effect to make it a little bit bigger than what it was before.

5. Click adjust , and set the blur setting. I usually use a 25 because it gives a nice glow.

So what I do then is I'll group it once I'm satisfied with how this thing looks. Grouping the images makes it easier to drag and resize. And you can always ungroup it anytime.

Choose a Font

Now, what I like to do then is you know, pick a font that really pops on YouTube. You can research other people's fonts to benchmark the best practices. One of the things that I like is something that just really stands out. For me, I like Barlow Black font.

I like to not make the design crowded and busy. Also think about where to put your logo, make sure that it’s not going to be on top of your timestamp.

Canva Elements

I've also done stuff where I just grab a whiteboard, and added elements on top of it. Canva has a repository of a large numbers of elements. So there are many things to choose from.

So, I build this whole thing out and put some text in the middle of it. And that was it.  Sometimes I just leave them empty.

Designing using Canva elements

Image Enhancements

With some product shots, I'll take a really sharp looking image. For example, I take a good image of a book. So you can go and do all the various adjustments—brightness, contrast, saturation, tilt, etc. to make it look a little bit better. Be very subtle with some of these changes that you make.

So there are some awesome options here that you can use. You can also adjust the scale and position of the image in the workspace.

One of the things that I recommend you do before you create your thumbnail, is to look at the ones that are performing well. What you can do with that is you can actually find the ones that are doing well.

You also want to look at the date. So look at your opportunities. So you want to analyze it and make sure what's going to make your thumbnail stand out. And then add a nice little catchy headline.

But again, one of the biggest things that I'd recommend is if you can invest in even a low grade DSLR camera to get a high resolution image. One of its benefits is that I do have the bokeh effect. This makes the text actually pops out.

Let's say you have a microphone image, but you don't have that bokeh feature. One of the things you could do with Canva is bring it down to size. Then remove the background. You can probably overlay it pretty easily. So it's the exact same size.

Bring that brightness down of the background. And then you pop this over the top of it. So you created that bokeh effect still made the microphone pop even though it doesn't have that same bokeh effect.

It's definitely something you can do. You can see it still really pops because we create a lot of contrast. This is a this is a trick that I found that when not a lot of people are doing to kind of really make an image pop.

Left image: Bokeh effect using Canva | RIght image: Built-in Bokeh effect

If you do have an issue where the image keeps fading into the background, just hit the back button. This happens especially when you're pulling an image bigger than the actual landscape dimension.

So, play around with it and get high resolution images utilize the features that have available that you guys will do well I think even with just the basic tools that just showed you I think you guys will absolutely just crush it with your Canva game.

I will see you guys in the next one.

-CMH