Is It Possible To Create Amazing YouTube Thumbnails?

Talk about Pixelmator Pro, share tips & tricks, tutorials, and other resources.
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2020-02-26 17:59:15

I see amazing thumbnails created in Photoshop and would like to do the same with Pixelmator instead..is this possible and do you have any examples and tutorials? I own Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro. See image for a thumbnail I got created for me.
Image
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2020-02-27 06:22:59

I don't see anything complex in that image and it should be well within the capabilities of Pixelmator or Pixelmator Pro to recreate it or create something similar.

Try to visually deconstruct it. If something looks to be behind something else then it's probably on a lower layer.
If something appears to have a border or a shadow then it probably has a stroke or a shadow set in the Style tool.
If a number of elements appear to be tilted at the same angle then they probably have the same angle of rotation set in the Arrange tool.

Pixelmator Pro has a comprehensive onlne help (Help > Pixelmator Pro Help) as well as a wide-ranging set of tutorials (Help > Tutorials) and there's a community here that can help you if you really get stuck. So just do it. Make mistakes. Learn from them. Have fun.
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2020-02-27 12:16:10

I'm with Stef on this one, it's definitely possible and relatively easy to recreate the thumbnail you've shared in both Pixelmator and Pixelmator Pro. There aren't any tutorials on it from us, but even if we did make one, we would probably focus on certain visual effects rather than best practices for YouTube thumbnails specifically or developing your own visual style and the latter are more important. Thinking about it, though, that would actually be pretty cool, so maybe we should consider this... :smile:

In the thumbnail you've shared, the two main effects used are a stroke and shadows with several objects that have probably been cutout (the person and the YT logo). So before we get into a detailed step-by-step explanation, could you let us know how familiar you are with the selection tools and layer styles?
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2020-02-27 13:59:00

I'm glad Andrius is here to rescue me. I forgot about masks. The ability to mask objects is the easiest way to isolate the face on the right (you could delete the bits you don't like with the Erase tool, but I much prefer the ability to undo, redo, and fine-tune masks).
There are a lot of techniques to masking but at its essence it involves adding a mask to a layer (Format > Mask > Add Mask) then painting on it in black to make the layer transparent and keeping it white to keep it opaque. Again, I would recommend playing as the best way to learn.
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2020-02-27 16:33:54

Word of warning though, strokes (and layer styles in general) are applied to the original contents of the layer, rather than the masked outline, so you'd probably need to forego them this time. Though I can already hear a very valid feature request (or two) incoming. :smile: