12 Must-Have Thumbnail Maker

12 Must-Have Thumbnail Maker

If you want to become a successful YouTuber, including an eye-catching thumbnail on your video clip is not an option. A high-quality video cover will not only attract more potential viewers but also improve your video's ranking on YouTube's search results. However, finding the best thumbnail maker can be a challenge sometimes. That's because you must look at features such as free stock photos, templates, fonts, and even subscription plans. So today, I want to introduce you to some affordable YouTube thumbnail maker apps to propel your channel to stardom. Let's get started!

Part 1. Desktop Thumbnail Maker You Can't-Miss

Wondershare Filmora9 is the best thumbnail maker for YouTube for pros and beginners alike. Unlike complicated desktop apps such as Adobe Photoshop, this video editing app is simple to use and fast. It allows you to cut, crop, rotate, speed up, apply effects, and other basic video editing features. Now let's see how to make a beautiful YouTube thumbnail with Wondershare Filmora9.

Step 1. Upload a Picture or Snapshot

Download and install Filmora9 and then run it. Now drag-and-drop your image file to the New Project window.

Step 2. Customize your Photo

Next, start customizing your image professionally by cutting, applying effects, adding text, etc.

Step 3. Save your Image File

Now click the camera icon to take a snapshot. After that, right-click the picture and choose the Reveal in Explorer option. Wondershare Filmora will make your image file in PNG format.

Part 2. 11 Free Online Thumbnail Maker

To add on the Filmora9, let me now take you through some eleven other helpful online options.

Pixteller is a complete YouTube thumbnail maker that creates video covers easily on any updated browser. It offers users hundreds of premade YouTube thumbnail designs to import and customize accordingly. With Pixteller, you can make thumbnails from scratch by choosing a custom thumbnail size or premade templates. After importing a photo, Pixteller will quickly edit the template by cropping, adding text, applying filters, resizing, and more. Moreover, Pixteller allows you to use drawings on your thumbnail.

Pros:

• Super-easy to use
• Hundreds of ready-made YouTube templates
• Excellent customization tools

Cons:

• No background managing feature of the free version
• Requires users to create an account first

There's certainly no monkey business here, especially when it comes to making smashing thumbnails. With PicMonkey, you just need to sign up and then select a thumbnail that fits your YouTube needs from the available options. You can also add your own image or snapshot to an empty YouTube template and start customizing by adding effects, stickers, texts, and even textures. Even better, you can apply makeups and frames to your image before downloading.

Pros:

• Thousands of nice-looking templates
• Excellent basic editing options
• Apply frames and makeups

Cons:

• No background management on the free trial
• Needs subscription to download thumbnails

Fotojet is a beautiful thumbnail maker for YouTube that will make you some eye-popping thumbnails in a blink. Here, you'll get a massive collection of professionally designed templates that you can use to create YouTube thumbnails easily. It has more than 700 templates for making posters, business cards, banners, graphics, and more. You can edit the templates with multiple resources, including shapes, fonts, images, backgrounds, and more.

Pros:

• 700+ template designs
• Abundant customization resources
• Vast photo collage

Cons:

• The free trial version has adverts
• Can do with more templates

Crello provides a massive collection of graphic design tools and objects to help you create tantalizing YouTube thumbnails easily. It boasts of more than 20,000 great-looking templates that can be customized to design a professional thumbnail. You can personalize templates by adding text captions, color backgrounds, image backgrounds, stickers, and even effects. On top of making thumbnails, you can also convert between GIF and image formats with lossless quality.

Pros:

• Collaborative editing
• 20,000+ file editing
• Pocket-friendly subscription plans

Cons:

• Doesn't support video content
• Clunky UI

Fotor is a wonderful multiplatform graphic design and photo editing tool that currently boasts of more than 300 million users. The simple drag-and-drop design is tailor-made for helping users make high-quality visual content. It offers up to 110 different and cool filters for making your images sharper. You can edit images further by adding texts, stickers, and even background colors/images. Overall, you can do anything you want to do to your images here.

Pros:

• Tons of effects
• Cost-effective payment plans
• Simple to use

Cons:

• No collaborative editing>
• No for pro editors

This graphic design software offers users all the necessary tools to start designing, editing, and publishing images or graphics easily. It's a cloud-based solution with thousands of free social media graphics and ad templates. It's simple to use as you only need to choose a YouTube template design and customize it with available tools. You can add texts, image backgrounds, colors, and more. Moreover, Bannersnack updates content from time-to-time with customer considerations in mind.

Pros:

• Allows batch file creation
• Simple to use
• Easy collaboration

Cons:

• Limited template sizes
• A bit pricey

Founded back in 2015, Snappa is home to millions of users, thanks to its vast template library and predefined graphic dimensions. It gives users a unique opportunity of choosing multiple graphic sizes for video thumbnails, blogging, social media posts, business cards, and so on. After selecting a template, you can apply a background color/image, add text, apply stickers, and eventually save it to JPG or PNG formats. Also, you can draw sketches from scratch, which is a rare feature to find. Thus, it's safe to conclude that Snappa is a must-have for any serious YouTuber.

Pros:

• Basic image editing tools
• Extensive graphic library
• Social media sharing

Cons:

• Lack of advanced editing features like smoothening and pixelating
• Limited effect options

If you still haven't found the perfect thumbnail maker, try Visme. It's a free app that allows users to make interactive infographics, presentations, visual adverts, and more. It's simple to use yet very powerful, making it ideal for marketers, companies, professional photographers, and more. The platform has thousands of built-in images, graphics, and templates for creating awesome YouTube thumbnails. But even more importantly, users can upgrade from the free basic version easily.

Pros:

• Collaborative workspace
• Customizable templates
• Extensive content library

Cons:

• Poor customer support
• The free plan has limited features

Picmaker is a simple way to make amazing YouTube thumbnails quickly. The platform offers 100,000+ graphic elements, including 700+ templates, 1000+ royalty-free photos, filters, backgrounds, etc. Even juicier, you can add stickers and company brands to your YouTube thumbnail before downloading it.

Pros:

• 100,000+ graphic elements
• Huge template library
• Easy to use

Cons:

• Clunky UI
• Needs more stock photos

Canva is a cloud-based graphic design tool that offers a simple drag-and-drop UI with hundreds of layouts. Apart from creating video thumbnails easily, Canva can also make flyers, business cards, posters, card invitations, and more. The stock library has more than one million photos, fonts, graphics, illustrations, and much more that users can add to their designs. You can also use Canva app for iPad and iPhone to make designs and share them to social media on-the-go.

Pros:

• Drag and drop editor
• Lots of custom templates
• Collaborative editing

Cons:

• No direct upload of local pictures
• No ruler

Finally, you can use Adobe Spark and its vast cloud storage to make and save graphic designs with ease. Here, you can make videos, web pages, and of course, custom graphics from the comfort of your computer or smartphone/tablet. You can design YouTube thumbnails with its multiple template designs or even create from scratch. After uploading a photo, you can now customize it with text overlays, logos, background colors, and images. And yes, you can make videos with similar customization tools.

Pros:

• Cloud storage integrations
• Create videos and websites
• Color, background, and font customizations

Cons:

• No collaborative editing
• Free thumbnails have Adobe Spark watermarks

Summary

With these thumbnail maker apps, you don't need any prior skills to make that beautiful YouTube thumbnail. You can use the Filmora9 for offline processing or the other eleven online options if you can get a reliable internet connection. And don't forget to keep in mind the YouTube requirements for the perfect video thumbnail.