09:23Dill Toma · Tutorial
The Thumbnail Secrets Nobody Teaches You
A ten-year thumbnail designer breaks his process into four pillars: audience, attention, clarity, and desire.
September 19thThe argument in one line.
A professional thumbnail artist turns stock movie posters and a generative-AI hair cutout into a thumbnail that matches a creator's existing trilogy, then tests color variations with the creator live before publishing.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A thumbnail designer or aspiring freelance designer who wants a real client workflow from brief to final file, not just design theory.
- A YouTuber running a multi-part video series who needs new thumbnails to read as part of a set without looking repetitive.
- Someone curious how Photoshop's generative AI features handle hair cutouts and background cleanup inside a real paid project.
SKIP IF…
- You're looking for a full Photoshop course covering tools beyond thumbnail-specific workflows like Select Subject and Generative Fill.
- You want editing or motion-graphics instruction; the matching video intro is shown only briefly and not explained step by step.
The full version, fast.
A working thumbnail designer breaks down building the third thumbnail in a popular creator's long-running video trilogy, from sourcing retail movie poster art through Photoshop's Select Subject and Generative Fill tools to patch a messy hair cutout. The design has to match the color palette, head position, and VS-logo placement of two earlier instalments so returning viewers recognize it as part of the series. After roughly four hours of work on the thumbnail and a matching video intro, the designer reveals both to the creator over a video call, offers a few color options, and lets the creator pick the one that fits the franchise. The lesson: generative AI removes the most tedious part of a portrait cutout, but matching prior work matters more than any single new creative idea.
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00:00 – 00:19
01 · Kurtis Conner's trilogy
Cold open teasing the thumbnail and intro about to be built for Conner's Barbie vs. Bratz trilogy.
00:19 – 01:15
02 · History with Kurtis
Background on the designer's path from full-time YouTuber to full-time thumbnail artist, and the prior Conner thumbnails that hit trending.
01:15 – 02:15
03 · The challenge
Context on the Barbie vs. Bratz trilogy's view counts and the pressure to elevate, not replace, the established look.
02:15 – 09:00
04 · Making the thumbnail
Full Photoshop build: sourcing Barbie and Bratz poster art, Select Subject and Generative Fill for the hair cutout, rule-of-thirds overlay, color and blur passes.
09:00 – 12:57
05 · Reveal to Kurtis
FaceTime call walking Conner through the finished thumbnail and matching video intro, testing color variations and getting his notes.
12:57 – 14:24
06 · Final results
Watching the video go live, reading early comments, and pitching a one-hour consultation giveaway.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- A thumbnail designer can build a career around deep, repeat work for a single creator's franchise rather than spreading effort across many one-off clients.
- Generative AI inside Photoshop now handles messy hair cutouts automatically, producing blended edges a manual lasso selection can't match.
- Repeating a visual element, like a VS logo's exact placement, across every thumbnail in a series tells returning viewers they're watching the next installment.
- A one-click subject-selection tool isolates a face and hair instantly, leaving only the fine hair edges for manual cleanup.
- Generative fill can remove a logo or extend a background cleanly enough to pass as native image content.
- A subtle motion blur applied to static elements can imply movement in a still thumbnail without a viewer consciously noticing it.
- Four hours was the production time spent on a single high-stakes thumbnail plus a matching video intro for a creator with millions of subscribers.
- Presenting a client with two or three finished color variations turns feedback into a fast choice instead of an open-ended critique.
- Keeping a subject's head position consistent with prior entries in a series can outweigh a designer's instinct to change the composition.
- A free downloadable rule-of-thirds and safe-zone overlay removes the guesswork of composing around a platform's rounded thumbnail corners and timecode badge.
Designing a thumbnail that fits an existing franchise
THUMBNAIL CRAFT
A professional thumbnail artist uses Photoshop's generative AI and a disciplined overlay system to turn stock movie posters and a creator's face into a thumbnail that matches the rest of an established series.
02History with Kurtis
- Repeat client relationships in design work tend to come from consistently freeing up a creator's time on a high-stakes recurring asset, not from one standout design.
- A portfolio built around deep work for one creator's franchise can carry more weight than a portfolio spread thin across many one-off clients.
03The challenge
- When continuing a series' visual identity, the job is elevating what already works, not replacing it with something unrecognizable.
- A franchise with tens of millions of combined views across its earlier instalments sets a hard bar for what a new entry's thumbnail has to live up to.
04Making the thumbnail
- Licensed stock movie posters already do most of the cleanup work, so sourcing finished art from retail listings beats building image assets from scratch.
- A one-click subject-selection tool isolates a face immediately, which means manual effort only needs to go toward fine details like loose hair strands.
- Running generative fill over a rough hair selection produces naturally blended edges, solving the hardest and slowest part of a portrait cutout by hand.
- Once a composition reads clearly, adding more effects risks diluting a clean idea; simplicity outperforms complexity past that point.
05Reveal to Kurtis
- Presenting a client with two or three color variations instead of one final file turns feedback into a quick choice instead of an open-ended critique.
- A collaborator who already trusts an established color palette will often default to the version that matches prior work over a new creative risk.
Terms worth knowing.
- Select Subject
- A Photoshop tool that automatically detects and selects the main subject in an image, isolating a face or body from its background in one click.
- Generative Fill
- An AI feature in Photoshop that generates new pixel content inside a selection, used here to blend cut-out hair edges and to extend or clean up background imagery.
- CTR (click-through rate)
- The percentage of people who click a video after seeing its thumbnail and title, the core metric a thumbnail is designed to improve.
- Rule of thirds overlay
- A grid guide placed over a design that marks the safe zones, rounded corners, and timecode badge a platform adds to thumbnails, used to keep key elements from being cropped or covered.
Things they pointed at.
Lines you could clip.
01:25
“I'm just honored to be able to help elevate the stories Curtis wants to tell and hopefully get that CTR up. Click through rates, that digital gate.”
07:21
“This has changed the game. And if it wasn't for generative AI and the AI tools built into Photoshop, I don't think I would be a professional thumbnail artist.”
13:54
“It's just released to the world and it's just out there. Just, it's not lost on me, the opportunity that Curtis has given me to be able to make these thumbnails.”
Word for word.
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metaphor
Curtis Connor has asked me to make a thumbnail for his Barbie vs. Bratz video. This is the third video in a massive trilogy that he's done over the last two years.
I'm not only going to do a thumbnail, but I'm also going to help build a custom intro. And at the end of this video, I'm going to reveal these things to Curtis himself over FaceTime and get his thoughts. Let's go.
Over the last five months, I have been on a crazy journey. I went from being a full -time YouTuber and filmmaker over the last five years to now being a full -time thumbnail designer. I've made thumbnails for Max Fosh, Hayden Hillier -Smith, and The Editing Podcast, and of course, the title thumbnail of this video.
Curtis Conner. So I made my first thumbnail for Curtis for a video titled Stop Filming Strangers. It's a video about people on TikTok who go up to strangers and essentially harass them for content.
We've since done two other thumbnails. I took a vision healing class, which ended up being number one on trending the day it was released and a deep dive into Potterheads, which was number three on trending the day it was released. Curtis has such an active fan base that loves his content.
I'm just honored to be able to help elevate the stories Curtis wants to tell and hopefully get that CTR up. .
Two years ago, Curtis made a video called Barbie versus Bratz. Then a year later, he followed it up with Barbie versus Bratz 2. These two videos are hilarious and combined have over 10 million views.
So when Curtis hit me up about making the thumbnail for the third and final installment of his Barbie versus Bratz trilogy. i was stoked i didn't want to stray away from his initial design but i wanted to find ways to elevate the concept and clean some things up a little bit i also had an idea about an intro video that i've been wanting to do with curtis and i felt like this was the perfect time to experiment with that which is like the cool part about the the thumbnail dude i've been working with too it's like he has ideas that we like bounce off each other and like it's like That was like a whole new thing for me.
It was like having someone else. Dude, the thumbnail guy, like cottage industry of our space is pretty incredible. It's crazy.
You know, like that's an entire economy now of thumbnail guys. I don't even understand. what they're doing.
So first I started by finding the initial assets, first being Bratz. And I love this movie poster that I found. It's actually on Amazon Prime.
Looks like they already did most of the work for me, cleaned it up nicely. May have to remove the little TM logo on the corner there, but... Great starting point and the next was Barbie I was having a hard time trying to figure out which asset I should use from the Barbie movie But I felt like this shot of Margot Robbie in the pink car was kind of the cleanest and most recognizable image next I wanted to pull an image of Curtis's face that I'm going to use in the thumbnail And because we decided to basically have the thumbnail turn into the intro of the video, he actually went ahead and just sent me the intro.
So he starts with his iconic Curtis face. It's a kind of like confused, self -loathing face, which he's a master at. Next, I brought that image into Photoshop, hit the select subject tool.
And thankfully, Photoshop does a great job of selecting Curtis's face and hair. His hair is not perfect. It is a little curly and has little edges that kind of get lost on the automatic subject detection.
So I did go in there and tweak it a little bit. But as you can see, once I remove the background, his hair is not perfect, but we will fix that and get to that later. This is just a great starting point and really all I need to get going.
Next, I applied the overlay that I use for every single thumbnail that I create. The rule of thirds. By the way, the most essential YouTube thumbnail overlay pack is available.
on my website for free at learn thumbnails .com. It shows you what your thumbnail will look like with the rounded corners that YouTube puts on all of the thumbnails for mobile and desktop and a timecode mockup. It's available in the first link down below.
I initially start by putting the versus logo on top of Curtis's head to match the other thumbnails. It is important to remember that this is a video in a series of other videos. And as you're designing your thumbnails, it's important to have a consistent design language so that you're Viewers know this is a part of a specific type of series.
Next, I brought in my Barbie and Bratz movie posters, created a shape that I then duplicated so that both could be the exact same size. The Bratz movie poster is kind of perfect as is, but the Barbie logo has the text in a different plane compared to Bratz. And I felt like it just looked a little messy and it was hard to make that out if the Barbie text was lower than Bratz.
So I actually... brought that up and used generative fill to not only remove the date and some of the extra text to clean it up, but I also use generative fill to extend the bottom of that car. Next, a simple bit of white paint to paint out the TM under Bratz.
Don't sue us. This does take place in America. That was an intelligent joke.
A little bit of tweaking to make sure that the composition looked good. I ended up using generative fill on Bratz as well to extend the floor slightly. Next, I actually pulled in the other thumbnails from this series.
I wanted to make sure that the angle and lining up of things was as close to the actual thumbnails as possible. Again, keeping a consistent theme here, even though I liked having Curtis down a little bit lower. I just wanted to make sure that he was happy and kind of keep it the same.
So I ended up actually moving Curtis up slightly to match the other thumbnails that he's done. And I could get really crazy with this and go really complicated, but I think simplicity wins when it comes to thumbnail design. Next, I wanted to add a little bit of a pop to the Barbie and Bratz movie posters.
So I made sure to duplicate my layers because I didn't want to lose my work if I messed it up. And then I began to play with the perspective of both of those movie posters, taking it from a flat design. a more 3D pop design.
And what I like about the perspective change of these movie posters is that it points the eye to our subject, which is Curtis. You see Barbie, you see Bratz, you recognize those logos, but it... pushes your eye to the handsome, beautiful mustache on Curtis's face.
I wasn't 100 % positive if Curtis would approve of the purple. So I went ahead and actually selected the same color that he used for the other Barbie thumbnails. And just to have a version of it, I figured we would do kind of a green background as well, matching the other thumbnails.
Next, I applied a slight pink light wrap on his face. And then I got to the tricky part for Curtis, which is always his hair. proper ways to cut out hair in Photoshop but for me it's all about speed and I don't really have the patience to sit there and draw over each individual hair so once I feel like I'm at a decent point to do this I actually select the hair around the edge of Curtis and hit generate and see what happens and As you can see, I got some really great results with the generative AI built into Photoshop, giving us those perfect blended edges.
The hair looks completely natural, does not look like I cut it out because it actually adds the hair back in using generative AI. It's fantastic. .
And if it wasn't for generative AI and the AI tools built into Photoshop, I don't think I would be a professional thumbnail artist. This is one of the tricks that I'm going to teach you guys in my course. So make sure to subscribe down below and you'll find out more about that as I build my thumbnail course.
I believe now that anybody can be a thumbnail artist. I felt Curtis wasn't standing out enough from the background. So I applied a slight gradient to make the background a little bit darker.
And then because I kind of wanted to go a little extra, I added a slight motion blur to the edges of the image, giving the Barbie and Bratz logo a sense of movement with the thumbnails. Very subtle. If you don't know it's there, you might not even notice it.
And I feel like I'm essentially done here. This is... really all that it needs to be.
It's Curtis's face with the two movies there with the verses. I've enhanced it by cleaning some things up on the images themselves, keeping them very simple and minimalistic. I've moved his head slightly down, but it's still maintaining the same composition of his previous versions.
And now I'm actually going to take... some of these assets into Final Cut Pro and edit a video intro to surprise Curtis with. Because of autoplay on YouTube, you need to be thoughtful of your first three to five seconds of your video.
And I think there's nothing better than confirming your thumbnail with visuals. And in this case, having the visuals literally be the thumbnail. I think will really help the viewer click on that video.
So after a total of four hours spent on this project, I was ready to reveal it to Curtis. Okay, so I took what you've done already, which was that format with like that blue background with the movies, you know, next to each other and tried to elevate it a little bit. I added a little bit of like a 3D effect here, you know.
with the images and when you zoom out, I think it still pops pretty good. It's that same exact color that you used on this one. You can see how when I cycle between the two, it's still keeping the original, but it's hopefully cleaning it up and kind of elevating it slightly.
Yeah, definitely.
So I love it. I was like, I don't know what else to do. Like, I don't want to overdo it.
Um, I want to just keep it as simple as possible. Um, yeah, I mean, that's, that was the, the thing I liked about the other thumbnails too. They're so simple.
Any tweaks or changes that you see? The only thing is I can't really, I don't, it might just be a me thing, but I, I can't really tell where the bottom of the Barbie poster ends and the, Yeah, it might just be my phone, but it kind of just seems like it's kind of like you can't see it Seems like it ends up at the bottom of the car.
Okay. I also had other background colors there as well like like a tan color or Purple, I think purple pops it nicely, but I'd be interested to see What the purple background looks like too. Yeah, I mean I can show you right now.
So yeah, the purple does pop Pretty nice as well. Yeah.
You know? Because it contrasts that blue nicely. So now you don't have that edge problem anymore with the purple.
And it fits the vibe of the Barbie and the Bratz colors and stuff. We could saturate it a little bit more too if you want. That doesn't look good.
I'm good to test out the three, I guess. The main one you sent, and then the purple option, and then the blue with some outline stuff. What do you think about...
I was also playing with that. That way the verses is clean. I looked at all your thumbnails, and I've never seen a thumbnail where your head is that low.
That's technically... I do kind of like me being down there. Because it makes the verses pop much better now.
Yeah. And then if you zoom out. Yeah, I think I actually like that better.
So this is what the intro would look like.
again i could do definitely do any tweaks here i didn't even know yeah i mean it's pretty much the only thing i might just like take away like the sunglasses and some of the other effects and then yeah i can kind of tweak that intro a little bit and send you the project file and we'll call it we'll call it awesome i love it awesome All right, dude.
Well, I think we're onto something here. I'll make those changes and get back to ASAP. And I appreciate the opportunity, man.
Thanks. Sick. Yeah, thanks.
I'm stoked on it. Thanks for making another sick thumbnail.
And get back to editing. But I will talk to you later. All right, man.
See you, buddy. All right, see you. Okay, here we go.
Curtis said that the video would be live. Right now, this is my first time going on YouTube and seeing, there it is, homepage, 4 ,000 views in the first five minutes. There's that nice purple background.
Let me scrub my mouse over. Oh, yes, he used it. Oh, he did a nice little zoom too.
I love that. Okay, let's check it out. Let me actually watch it.
Nice. It's time. Folks, two years ago, I made.
Wow. Cool. Okay, cool, cool, cool.
This is awesome. Let's see the comments. The sequel we've all been waiting for.
The pinnacle of this series. This is the only thing that's going to get me through finals. I still can't get over the fact that I sit here at my desk.
I edit for, you know, four or five hours on something. I just obsess over that thumbnail and then. It's just released to the world and it's just out there.
Just, it's not lost on me. The opportunity that Curtis has given me to be able to make these thumbnails. I really hope Curtis that you're happy with how this came out.
If you would like to win a one hour consultation to talk about thumbnails, to talk about YouTube strategy, just make sure to subscribe and comment Barbie brats and thumbnails. And I will know that you are entering in to win a one hour consultation from me.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A professional thumbnail designer gets the call for the third thumbnail in a trilogy that's already pulled in over 10 million views, builds the whole piece in Photoshop live on screen, then finds out over FaceTime whether the creator agrees with the result.
Named ideas worth stealing.
06:42concept
Select Subject + Generative Fill hair cutout
Run Select Subject to isolate a face, then select the ragged hair edge and apply Generative Fill, which regenerates believable loose hair instead of leaving a hard-clipped edge.
Steal forany portrait cutout for a thumbnail, poster, or promo graphic
04:54list
Franchise consistency checklist
- Same VS logo placement
- Same proven background color
- Same head position as prior instalments
Before adding anything new, match the elements that already worked across the series so returning viewers instantly recognize the next instalment.
Steal forany recurring thumbnail, cover art, or episodic series
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
13:54subscribe
“If you would like to win a one hour consultation to talk about thumbnails, to talk about YouTube strategy, just make sure to subscribe and comment Barbie brats and thumbnails.”
Ends on the real view-count payoff from the FaceTime reveal, then converts that goodwill into a giveaway ask requiring a subscribe plus a specific comment phrase, making entries easy to track.
MENTIONED ON CAMERA
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
Visual structure at a glance.
