Super secret Minecraft thumbnail hack 2023+

So I’m editing a thumbnail for IW games and he sent me this screenshot that I’m working with and I’m just going to do something with it this is actually a pretty good screenshot I’m probably going to go with like a dark purple so I’m just going to isolate this

Real quick and then I’ll go over like some editing techniques so before I like outline I like to add a little bit of feather about like I don’t know 5 pixels just so it’s not so like choppy you see that kind of blur around there you should be able to see that so

I like to use uh an overlay if you are not confident about like your ability to Center the player this is like this is called rule of thirds and it kind of just like puts it in different strips to have it even in my case I kind of

Guessed it perfect again so I’m not going to use that and I’ll just go over a few uh quick overlays that I use so this is just a like kind of old film effect that I can use so just have it so it is like the largest I’m using photos

Shop by the way for anyone that doesn’t know uh I’ll just put the rest of these in but I’ll hide them so if you want it to like kind of go over everything and obviously I want to have the player in front then I would have or I’d go under

Like this overlay or masking whatever this is and you could just select any of these and I think that ah what’s going to look best I think linear Dodge ad is pretty good but you know you can you can experiment with them you could also lower the opacity like that that also

Looks pretty good but I’m not going to add these until later I usually do these last this is just uh I don’t know I would say particles but it’s like kind of weird this one you don’t really have to do any effects with unless you wanted to I sometimes do yeah

Just make sure that the player is like over the overlay so it kind of just doesn’t go over it it just looks better that way this is very common I see this one used a lot sometimes I combine this and the black border uh one that I’m

Going to go over in a sec this one I’ll probably use in this thumbnail I think that makes it look a lot better it’s just a simple like black fade works really well and this is the iconic black border that I got from Mystic Striker or

I didn’t he didn’t send it to me but it kind of like inspired me to use it so in this situation I have to add the overlay effect or I guess that one works too but I I use overlay every time basically and it kind of smoothens out that like Edge

Right there so yeah those are overlays and once you separate the player sometimes I’ll have the player a bit more saturated than that like the background or I’ll desaturate the background depending on how it is in this case I’ll probably do like both so maybe add plus

And I just desaturate this a little bit so I think I’m going to go with like a here you can kind of see how it like limits the colors a little bit which is my plan cuz I want to add more purple and I want it to be like overall purple

So it kind of has like a over overlay on like this like regular block so color balance uh let’s do magenta and blue that should look fine so that’s easy background if you want to uh make the background like better you can use any of these blurs I’d say gajan blur is

Pretty nice sometimes I don’t use it that often o I forgot a small part right here this is when you got to use the Eraser tool and make sure it is not uh like 100% smooth or it’s like I don’t know how to explain it oh I’m kind of lagging a little bit

From this oh well and for like these Corners just lower the size oh the hardness make sure the hardness is not at 100 cuz it’s not going to be as like Smooth while eracing it doesn’t have to be perfect cuz when you’re zoomed out you don’t really

Notice it as much especially with the player see so yeah gajen blur I don’t usually use that for montages or Montage thumbnails I used to use radio blur a lot which that’s what it does uh it doesn’t really fit my style of thumbnails but some of you might like it I’m not going

To because people know me for using motion blur very common and in Photoshop you can change the angle whichever way you want you can do vertical blow which I’m going to do so I’ll do like a I usually don’t do it perfectly straight but in the S of like keeping it basic

I’ll do that and if you want you can also go to filter Gallery I was about to say so stripped oh no not stripped my bad chat vertical and then kind of has like these lines I don’t always use this but you can if you want I’ll just add a little bit of

Contrast and then the intensity I’ll just do that let’s see how that looks uh I’ll do less I’d say just experiment with it depending on just how you think it looks let’s do very light yeah there we go so I always always add this effect it

Just looks a lot nicer you can edit it but I think this already looks pretty nice maybe if I add a little bit more depth yeah there we go so that’s pretty fun to mess with I’d say use that whenever you get the chance to and keep

In mind although this is a Photoshop tutorial just make sure you’re like noticing what I’m saying so you can transfer these tips over like the best you can or just remember remember the steps that I’m doing and then learn how to do those on whatever you’re using or

What app software if you’re on PC I would recommend Photoshop if you have the money or like ability to use it otherwise you can use uh I think photo p is good stroke I usually don’t use that I usually just use Inner Glow inner Shadow since it’s a purple theme I’ll

Just I’ll keep on inner Shadow but I’m going to turn on Inner Glow and I’ll make that like a I don’t know purple and it doesn’t look like too much yet but then I also add the outer glow and I just usually do the same thing uh let’s make it Smaller yeah so just like mess with the settings like that and I think that looks pretty nice drop shadow you can I don’t really notice it but I put it over anyways normally I would have like text to use but he didn’t give me text so I’m just

Going to put uh yo chat yo yo chat what what what word what like simple word should I put in so in Photoshop you can uh like change like the distancing and stuff between them so I’ll just show you guys what 200 spaces out the text a

Little bit uh I usually don’t do this but I think this font would be better if I do like 25 yeah and I’m also just picking another purple I’ll just do you know what sometimes I do like a lighter and then I see what the overlay does so I’m going

To test that uh I’ll just use linear again move it behind the player very common uh thumbnail strategy that I see like everywhere a theme with my thumbnails I like to have the player really large CU that’s like the kind of the center of attention for drop shadow

If you wanted it to be like less s or like less like blur you could just uh well first increase the size I think it’s distance like changes like how far off it is from that and then you can change the angle of which way it goes so most people just do

Like down right and then I think spread if I’m not wrong yeah yeah yeah so spread this makes it like more solid so I’ll just do that for this one since mostly yall like to see this sometimes and I’ll just do like downright and there’s the thumbnail really good clip by the way

Ryan I can’t wait for this one I can make an editing tutorial on my next Montage too if y’all are interested so let’s just make this like pretty large as large as possible just so we have like the best screenshot like quality um since this is more like

Higher fov then I could just go on full screen just so it doesn’t have this bar and I just like to go to random points and look for like where a good pausing point is yeah the quality is kind of low cuz of Discord so for now on if y’all like want

Someone else to make a thumbnail for you then just send the clips through uh media fire or YouTube Ryan I did think that your uh recent Montage was really good by the way yeah so save that oh I forgot to show you all another thing that I was

Going to do so if you want to get rid of the Crosshair you can use uh this wait no not that this spot healing brush tool and you just rasterize the image whoops let me do that so right click rasterize it’s rasterized uh it works a

Good amount of a time but it doesn’t always you just want to do it in two different parts and if it’s a little bit like shoy right there you get the blur tool and then bam just good good as new so once again I’m going to separate Tech

From the thumbnail so I’m just going to object selection this is a good screenshot because the like text like box yeah so you see how it separates cuz of like the gray and it like perfectly separated it so I’m going to go select a mask kind of add some

Feather uh about five pixels you don’t really notice it that much until you actually separate it so I’m going to definitely saturate him he’s a little bit he’s looking kind of depressing yeah sometimes you just got to slide it around to see what looks nice I think that makes it kind of fun

I’ll just go with that why not so what’s up Vish so filter blur I think I’ll do a I’ll do like a small radial blur I haven’t done this in a while okay so that could that looks decent and it looks a little bit off-centered so I think I’m going to I’m

Going to check my my my magic overlay make sure yeah it’s a little bit off so right click or control click both of these and I usually just hold the arrow if it’s kind of like off it’s okay you just make the image larger and then that’s

Fine and there we go I’ll add like effects to him add that not as strong I like to have it like like less noticeable uh so now I could add uh like the overlays and sometimes when I get bored of the same one I’ll rotate it but I’ve

Been doing that for a lot of them so I’m not going to in this situation uh overlay oo don’t mind if I do not that strong though do like there we go and this effect uh I will probably also you know what no I’m going to lower the

Opacity there we go and I’ll also add the radio blur but not as strong let’s do two there we go actually this is another thing I do sometimes I’ll pick like a random color so like I don’t know yellow and then I’ll see how it looks with these like

Sometimes it goes crazy maybe not yellow cuz that is very different oh Oh there we go so I’ll just add the extra stuff that I do sometime I just look at it anyway sometimes it looks nice but it’s not that common in my opinion I could add a stroke uh I’ll see how it looks with it and sometimes I’ll just do like a

Just a darker whatever of that color and then I’ll just like load the opacity so if I want to do like crazy like other effects of the text like I want to like add an arch or hold on let me make this just a little bit higher so i’ in this

Situation I’ll go under edit transform also if you don’t stop be I’m going to time you both out warp uh so here’s all the options I’ve done Arc a few times so you just change uh I don’t mess with these two that kind of Duke I would just mess with

Bend and that kind of adds like that effect uh see your fish eye I use a pretty decent amount or not fishey I think it’s inflate wait no it is fishy and sometimes I use it not that much so we’ll just see what that looks like 20 it’s not always that noticeable and

You can also do negative which makes it kind of like warp into the player and then there’s also uh bulge I’ve been using this one a pretty decent amount lately I like it and yeah all right you know I’ll use this but now I got to lower the text there we

Go and you know what the character kind of stands out so I can also go under uh Hue saturation and drag that over this way and now it’s just a little bit more pink and now it’s more natural like some of these are decent but they just blend with the

Background this could be good I’ll try this all right new make sure it’s 1080P or 4K but you’re going to have to downscale it anyway so I just do 1080p if the text wasn’t here too but I could honestly probably remove this with AI it’s just bugging out sometimes the

Object selection doesn’t work well so you just have to do it manually yeah that should be good now I’m going to show you a quick little thing that I haven’t been doing much recently but I’m going to do it in this example because it’s pretty perfect uh let me just separate this

First same thing control CV make sure it’s blurry perfect so I’m going to use the same tool and I can get rid of that in the middle pretty simple but not that large let’s just make that smaller there we go now it’s gone if it looks kind of weird in the middle blur

Blur it’s gone okay here I’m just going to use the smoke effect it’s not centered but I can fix that yeah and it doesn’t Center you just click on it and then uh not at the top you can just drag it over I guess that’s not what I was going to do but

That works uh black border overlay do that every time trust me color jge I’m liking it add Freddy Fazbear no and once again this dude’s looking a little bit different so change a SAT atation or oh not sat I don’t know why I keep saying saturation keep mixing

Them let’s change that a little bit more orange text uh I’ll just do his IGN Draco and I’ll download a font go on du font it’s a trash right here usually I go under trash and there’s a pretty good all of these are really good for thumbnails

But I’m going to check out graffiti CU I feel like some of these might actually like like this one I feel like could be really good for Draco and you know I can add a filter green sometimes I do green all right cool um thumbnail number three

This one’s pretty basic but I don’t care look at look at what this kid sent me bro what the flare what the the flicky flip good combo but like what the heck man Ryan shows up like huh ooh all right boy I see you another

One oh I was about to say so since it’s a legacy people are going to recognize the UI and they might click more for that so I’m just going to screenshot the whole thing or I could get like a sword swing in there this is a good one I’m going to use this

Actually I’m probably actually I’m probably just going to keep keep the UI out just cuz the sword swing isn’t there But uh all right so now that this is in a different layer I’m going to uh use the AI to like get rid of this at the bot so I’ll just increase the size of this and then just rasterize the image I keep forgetting to do that so look good as

New right there too uh that crit doesn’t really matter but the sword is kind of pissed me off clone stamp tool this will basically copy the pattern up here and it’ll like draw it over this way it’s pretty nice so I can actually like really easily duplicate this if I were

To just like drag around I could do a cool like triplet effect you know what yeah I’m going to do a triplet effect or I could just do it this way so I do that maybe add some motion blur like in that Direction for the opacity maybe I not but got to put this dude in the front there we go both going crazy yes sir so let’s just hide that for now I’m going to do I’m just going to see how this looks I don’t do this a lot but if

I invert it’ll make it a white glow this I think I could also do the same thing invert and then linear burn and then I do that maybe I’ll show youall my my uh other program that I use so we’ll just do J1 export quality of this one doesn’t

Matter if it’s too high whatever nope it’s not j a one so now I’m going to introduce y’all to uh illustrator but I use illustrator for like more complicated like text and like art all right so new file uh 1080p doesn’t matter uh yeah the menu is pretty

Similar but so you still got some noticeable differences you know add the text text is very much easier to work with on illustrator so if y’all want to do more like design based stuff use illustrator if you want to like more do more photo editing then Photoshop should sound kind of

Explanatory and then you know the name all right so now select text make the stroke larger probably make this a little bit less okay that’s good so now I do create outlines and this will let me rasterize it or that’s basically rizing it same thing which turns it into like an

Editable image so now I can drag around the text stretch it whatever but that’s not what I’m going to be doing so I am going to try and do like a 3d effect that I used to do a lot and you 3D extrud bevel send you the perfect thumbnail I will check it

Out uh whoops see yeah that they just lets me rotate it it’s pretty nice I don’t use this all the time cuz it doesn’t always work that well but and I can have it like kind of dip under kind of pretty nice and then I can add like the outer

Glow that I did with the other one and there you go that’s the thumbnail tutorial uh let me save this save on your computer uh just to actually wait I I would separate these so I just put under Adobe whatever wherever you save that export as same thing in this program CH 2

Thumbnails there you go let me know which one is your favorite me personally it’s rather bottom left or top right and bottom left I like but I think the text for the top right one is just too good cuz I love purple man now but anyways uh thank you for watching the

Tutorial I will probably turn the stream into a video cuz this was very fun to make and maybe you know if the video does well video editing tutorial Montage tutorial possibly