The first click-bait for an Online Video is the thumbnail and it needs to be a great one. For quite some time we have relied on Photoshop but there are loads of other tools that you need to have in your ‘toolkit’. After using these tools for some time, you will realize that you possibly won’t need Photoshop at all.
I have grouped the tools and let’s take-up these groups one by one.
Photoshop Flexibility
If you want to retain the editing provided by Photoshop, here are the best tools:
GIMP
Photopea
This is an interesting free online application with surprisingly most of the photoshop features and plugins available. It allows you to import projects like PSDs and GIMP files also. And yes, it’s got the Content-Aware filter as well.
Website: https://www.photopea.com
Bulk Tools
XN Convert
A free application that helps you manipulate images in bulk. You can define ‘watch-folders’ and output folders and set edit tasks like cropping, watermarking, colour correction etc. You can also add tasks in sequence for the same batch.
You can let the application to work in the background while you are working on other tasks.
Download this free application if you got thousands of images to manipulate.
An alternative for this on the Windows OS is the FastStone Photo Resizer.
Download Link: https://www.xnview.com/en/xnconvert/
Simple Hack with Python
Sometimes you might want to download the custom thumbnails that you already have on the YouTube videos so that you can batch edit them. You can use these simple steps to download the thumbnails:
- Prepare a list of video ID’s for which you want to download the thumbnails.
- Now, get the URL for the custom thumbnails. The thumbnail of any YouTube video has the following URLs:
- Custom Thumbnail: https://img.youtube.com/vi/[VideoID]/maxresdefault.jpg
- Good quality: https://img.youtube.com/vi/[VideoID]/hqdefault.jpg
- Medium Quality: https://img.youtube.com/vi/[VideoID]/mqdefault.jpg
- Small Thumbnail: https://img.youtube.com/vi/[VideoID]/sddefault.jpg
- Using a simple excel formula, you can get the thumbnail URL for all of the video ID’s.
- Now save this excel sheet as a CSV <images.csv> in a directory. The first column should have the desired filename and the second one will be the URL for the image.
- Install python on your computer if you don’t have it. You can get the instructions to download and install Python from here: https://www.codecademy.com/articles/install-python
- Open Text Edit/ Note Pad and write the following Python Commands:
#!/usr/bin/env python
# assuming a csv file with a name in column 0 and the image url in column 1
import urllib
filename = "images"
# open file to read
with open("{0}.csv".format(filename), 'r') as csvfile:
# iterate on all lines
i = 0
for line in csvfile:
splitted_line = line.split(',')
# check if we have an image URL
if splitted_line[1] != '' and splitted_line[1] != "\n":
urllib.urlretrieve(splitted_line[1], splitted_line[0] + ".jpg")
print "Image saved for {0}".format(splitted_line[0])
i += 1
else:
print "No result for {0}".format(splitted_line[0])
- Save the notepad as a python file: <ImagesDownload.py>
- Using Terminal/Command Prompt run the python Command: <python ImagesDownload.py>
- The files will start downloading in the folder.
- Once downloaded, you can set batch actions using XN-Convert or other batch edit tools.
The Artistic Touch
Removing Background from images
While working on images, we tend to spend a lot of time removing the background from the images.
A better way to do so is by uploading the image to the website (remove bg). You can download the final png file and use it as a layer in your composition.
Website: https://www.remove.bg
Colorise B/W photos
There are many websites available that can be used to colorize b/w images. Here are some of them:
Algorithmia: https://demos.algorithmia.com/colorize-photos
Colourise: https://colourise.sg
Though the free version does not give you the highest quality, however for thumbnails, it should be fine.
Free Elements
Free Stock Images
A great website to download stock pictures for free is Pexels. There are millions of images that you can use contextually in your thumbnail.
Website: https://www.pexels.com
On a side note, there are videos available on this website that go up to a quality of 4K.
Free Clipart
Inserting clip-art adds context to your images and one such website to download free PNG’s is https://www.clipartmax.com
Decorative Text
If you want a text-based thumbnail with a stylized background, try the website:
Textpro: https://textpro.me
Creative Templates
Canva and Fotor
The free version of both of these online applications is enough to create good images for your online video. You would surely like the text designs and fonts that need a lot of effort when created manually.
Canva: https://www.canva.com
Fotor: https://www.fotor.com
Other helpful tools
Take a screenshot
Sometimes you would need a screenshot for your YouTube video at a specific time code. Most of us take the screenshot from the video player and it does not give the best quality.
This below website will allow you to scroll through the video and take a clean snapshot at the required TC.
Website: https://www.youtubescreenshot.com
The Unusual One!!
M.S. Powerpoint has a lot of options and gives you automatic design ideas that you can use for creating a thumbnail. The flexibility of moving the elements on a slide, sizing, fonts, etc helps a lot. You can anytime, save a slide as a PNG or JPG to create the thumbnail.
This is a smaller toolkit and you can find many more such applications and websites that you can use to create and manipulate your images. We at True Vine Works follow a ‘Pragmatic’ approach when it comes to image creation and manipulation. Do you have any specific requirements for thumbnail creation and manipulation? Write to us at [email protected]