![choose thumbnail for video file choose thumbnail for video file](https://expertdr.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/448-1.jpg)
“Don’t let your branding overpower what you want people to see,” he says. However, too many branded elements can be bad, warns Rodriguez. Perhaps your logo is always in the bottom left and you use a text overlay in the same font each time. Accomplish this with a repeated and recognizable style. While standing out on the feed is important, you may also want to build a consistent brand presence on your channel’s homepage. If you work with your image enlarged or zoomed in, you may be tempted to add too much to the design. This will give you a better idea of how your designs will look at scale. “What I’ve found that works is more contrast and less clutter,” says Rodriguez.Īny image you upload will automatically be sized down to 1280x720 pixels, so it’s best to resize your image to these dimensions before you edit. A busy image won’t read well at the size of a thumbnail. Once you have your image to work with, it’s time to pull it into Photoshop and add photo presets or text and graphic overlays. This will give you a more precise and high-quality thumbnail than a computer screenshot would.ġ. Find it: Drag your time indicator so your desired frame is in the playback window.Ģ. Hide layers: Hide any layers you don’t want in your image, such as text.ģ. Capture it: Click the small camera icon at the bottom right of the playback window.Ĥ. Export it: Choose your file type and click Export. To use a still from your video as your thumbnail, follow the steps below to quickly pull a frame and save it as an image. If you’ve found a few thumbnail designs that work well for your style of content, save the files to work from each time you need a new one.Įxport a still image from a video in Adobe Premiere Pro. Make your own YouTube thumbnail templates, and it will be easy to batch out new ones. You can change the thumbnail as many times as you want. If a video hasn’t performed well, change the thumbnail to see if that helps with the click rate. You can change the thumbnail of your video even after it’s been posted. Create a few different thumbnails and show them to your friends. See what types of thumbnails other people in your same industry use, and decide whether you’d like to go with the flow or stand out with something different. If you consistently give viewers what they came for, you can convert them into subscribers. Create an image that’s true to your content, and be sure to satisfy the viewer’s curiosity a few seconds into the video so they stick around. Avoid putting misleading images in your thumbnail just for the clicks. “The big rule on thumbnails is there are no rules,” says Rodriguez.Ĭlicks are not the only thing important to the YouTube algorithm. Whether it’s a still from the video or a photo you took at your shoot, your thumbnail will seem more authentic if you use your own images, rather than stock photos. These are easy design elements to master, even for non-designers. Build some curiosity or intrigue that only your video can satisfy, and the clicks will follow.Īside from an intro to the content of your video, your thumbnail should be a showcase of design elements that are eye-catching at a small scale, like high-contrast overlays of text or color. Functionally, it should give viewers a peek into what the video is about but not reveal everything. If you want to establish a YouTube channel with a large following, a clickable thumbnail is essential.