Have you been wondering how people get that glow around their face or the outline of their body on their YouTube thumbnails? Most of you probably try to do it by using Photoshop. But, if you’re like me, Photoshop is just so complicated. I’m not techie and it just frustrated me. So I never did it.

Fortunately, I’ve found an easy way for those of us who aren’t techie, to get that glow around the outline of your face when you create a thumbnail. That’s what I’m going to show you today and I promise you, you’re going to love me for this one.

Some of you might be thinking “I don’t even know what you’re talking about”. Here’s an example.

See that glow? That’s what we’re going to do today on your thumbnail. To get started you need to head over to www.canva.com. Now, most of you will have a free account, but I’ll be using the pro account. There’s so much more that you can do with a paid account. You can get a free trial for the pro account by clicking this link.

By checking out the 30-day free trial, you’ll not only be supporting me as an affiliate, but you’ll have access to all the amazing features as well.

Simple Instructions For Removing A Background

First, I’m going to use a photo that I’ve already uploaded and that has a background. With this photo, I want to do two things – remove the background and add a glow.

Here is my thumbnail photo.

I decided that I wanted to add a different background. You might have noticed some thumbnails that have a neat room in the background. Sometimes, I ask myself how these people get their house to look so perfect. Here’s the secret – they don’t. They just use templates that they’ve previously created.

To do this, we first have to remove the background on this photo. Here’s how:

• Click the image
• Select “edit image” or “effects” from the top menu
• Click on “background remover”

So now you know how to remove a background from any image or photo that you have. This is such a useful feature and one that I’m sure you’re going to use often.

Instructions For Adding A New Background

Your photo now has a white background so here’s how to add a new one:

• If you just go to “elements” and select an image, it will put that image on top of your photo and there’s no way that you can move it to the back and bring your other image to the front.
• To fix this, you have to first download your photo with the white background and select “transparent background”.

• Now, upload that photo again and it will have a transparent background for you to work with.
• Now, you can go to “elements” and choose the background that you want. I’m going to select a living room.
• Once you’ve added the element to your photo, you can move it to the back by clicking on “position” in the top menu.
• You can also blur the background image a little by adjusting the transparency. Just click on the little box with the dots in the top menu.

Adding A Glow

Let’s now see how to add a glow to your photo so that it stands out in your thumbnail.

• Click on the image of yourself and make sure that it’s selected
• Click on “edit image” or “effects” in the top menu
• Scroll down to “shadows” and select “glow”. (If you don’t see this option, scroll down to “you may also like” and click on “shadows” and then click “connect”. This will add the feature to your account.)

• If you click on “glow” twice, you’ll be able to change the color, the transparency, the size and the blur.

This is where you can play around with the settings to get exactly the effect that you want.

So, that’s how you add a glow to the outline of your image on your YouTube thumbnail. And, you don’t just have to use this feature around an image of yourself. Instead, you could add a glow around some text or any object that you want.

I hope you found this useful and have some fun playing around with your thumbnail images to really make them pop.