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.
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.
I don't want to use my phone because it's a pain. Let me run you through my setup top to bottom. I'm currently using a Sony A7C camera, which I bought for about $2,000—the most I've ever spent on video gear. It eliminates a lot of the hassle I had with my previous camera. Directly beneath it is a monitor I use to stay level with the camera, avoiding neck strain from looking down at a small laptop screen. To the left, I have a light stand positioned very close to the camera, acting like a softbox at a 45‑degree angle to illuminate one side of my face. On the opposite side, I use a small light to reduce dramatic shadows. Aside from that, I use an XP Pen tablet as a mouse pad for drawing; my pen moves the cursor across the screen, and the tablet projects onto my monitor. I find the tablet workflow far more effective and engaging than my previous tool, Whimsical, and I plan to keep using it.