How do you make your YouTube thumbnails brighter and make them pop more among hundreds of other videos?
I start by looking at a thumbnail I like. I notice my face looks wrinkly, so I reset it. I basically remove the background, then increase sharpening. I use a template where I shift the temperature toward blue, raise the brightness, lower the contrast, adjust highlights, and most importantly increase vibrance and saturation a bit, and boost sharpness—being careful not to go too high or too low. I usually end up with the settings around there, avoiding extreme clarity. That small tweak makes a big difference.
Yeah, sure. Let me do that right now. Canva.com. Copy my worst mistakes running an AI automations agency. Okay, let's just duplicate this. I guess I already have. So, check this out. In Canva, I have a BG or background remover when my screen doesn't lag like crazy. If I reset the tools, this is what the actual background looks like. It's just me looking damn sexy—I might add. Then I remove the background on the main photo. I don't know why there are two of me there; I didn't think that through. Then I go to edit, adjust, and crank up the vibrance and then the sharpness. Sharpness is important. Then the clarity as well. I find I don't know: if you have just two choices, this or this. What would you see on a tiny YouTube thumbnail (an inch by an inch)? Probably the clearer stuff. Does it look the best all zoomed in? No. Then I up the brightness a little bit, make the skin tone as bright as possible, make it stand out. So if I were to show you two examples: let's reset all the adjustments. That's the before and the after. The after hair looks kind of weird because it's white, but it pops more. That's what I do. And then, like the thumbnails, I mean, I don't really make them all myself now for the main channel. I do for this one here, although this was an exception. I made this one technically, but it was based off a template somebody else made for me. So that's how I do it. It's pretty quick.
I get about 10 people each day offering to design thumbnails for me, often using some scraper to find channels in a niche and offering a free demo thumbnail. I take them up on the offer; for example, I worked with a designer named Hanan from India/Pakistan, paying $30 per thumbnail. My workflow is simple: after recording my daily update, I record a quick 10‑second clip of myself making ugly faces at the camera—only my thumbnail editor sees this. I then tell the editor to upload the finished thumbnail to the same Google Drive folder, I post the video, and the next day I update the thumbnail. For my other thumbnails (like the ones on Nix), I start with a Canva template, grab a smiling screenshot from the earlier clip, delete the previous face, paste the new one, add another copy, use the background remover to isolate the face, creating two layers so I can place hair over a green section for a 3D effect. I then add platform logos (Instagram, NN) and do light editing in Clarity to make my face pop without maxing it out. The result looks like a YouTube‑sized thumbnail when zoomed out. I don’t spend much time on thumbnails, but they’re effective because consistent, quality content makes viewers associate my face with value, turning thumbnails into a self‑fulfilling market signal.
The simplest and easiest hack to thumbnails is, first of all, zoom way up — make the thumbnail approximately 3 inches by maybe an inch and a half — and ask yourself, 'Can I still read all the text on that thumbnail?' If you can, your thumbnail's probably okay. Second, instead of putting your head on the left, put your head on the right. The reason why is because in the bottom right-hand corner of the YouTube thumbnail you have a little timestamp, and timestamp sizes depend on what the person is using to view the video. If they're looking on mobile as they scroll through their phone, the timestamp is basically a quarter of the size, meaning if you have any text down there it'll overlay it and cut it off. I've done hundreds, maybe thousands of videos where I've thought really deeply about thumbnails, and I've iterated little by little on every single one of these tests to determine that these are the two highest ROI parts to it. Aside from that, if you create high-quality content, then just have your face in the thumbnail. If you do not create high-quality content, then do not have your face in the thumbnail. The reason why is because people will recognize your face and they'll make a determination as to whether or not the video is worth clicking on entirely based off of your face. In my case, I create really high-quality content, so I put my face in the thumbnails. People really like the thumbnails that have my face in them far more than the ones that don't. Most of the thumbnail tests I run involve two with face, one without face, and probably about 90% of the time the ones with my face in it win.
I use OBS (Open Broadcast Studio), a free software platform that lets you switch between full‑screen desktop, your face, and a picture‑in‑picture view. It works like a camera, supports custom backgrounds, and even includes built‑in streaming and chat features. You can record videos with screen share, stream, and add a green screen if you want. Spend a couple of hours learning how to use OBS and you’ll be set.