How to Create an Awesome Steemit Thumbnail With Pixlr.com

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This is a tutorial to help you create a nice looking Steemit thumbnail using a free program if you don't have Photoshop.

The above picture is a video if you click on it and it is a video tutorial showing how to use Pixlr and below is a written tutorial with lots of screenshots to help you along.

PICKING A PICTURE AND MAKING IT THE RIGHT SIZE FOR A THUMBNAIL

Step 1: Find a picture or background you would like to use as a base for thumbnail (your own, or from Pixabay or another copyright free source) and save to your computer

Step 2: Go To Pixlr.com

Step 3: Click on Web Apps (top left)

Step 4: Click on Install Chrome Extension

Step 5: You will get a little symbol on your toolbar, click on that...

Step 6: Then click Editor (next to Pixlr logo)

Step 7: Select open image from computer (you might have photo or background that you want to use for your thumbnail)

Step 8: (a) Select Image: image size

(b) Type in width: 800 Height: 450 (untick Constrain Proportions) Have a play around with cropping if the picture looks too distorted

CREATING THE BORDER

Step 9: Select the drawing tool (rectangle with circle in corner)

Step 10: Make border size 35 and untick fill shape, select the color palette on left toolbar not the one on the top line

Step 11: Select the color palette on left toolbar not the one on the top line and select what colour you would like to use, make sure it shows in the colour palette.

Step 12: (a) Put the curser on the top left corner and drag the curser...

(b) so it selects the whole rectangle and your border is created.

CREATE THE TEXT ON THE THUMBNAIL

Step 13: (a) Select the Type Tool (the capital A)

(b) pick your preferred font and size. I like Arial Black and size 75, as they will show up on the Steemit feed nicely.

Step 14: As you can see it doesn’t look great on two lines as spacing between sentences is too wide.

Step 15: If you need the words to go on separate lines, a way around this is to create seperate layers for each line of text. There may be a way to lessen spacing between sentences, but I have not found it yet.

Step 16: So go to layer: add layer

Step 17: Select text tool and write in your next line, position it on the thumbnail where you would like it

Step 18: (a) Then to add some pizazz to the lettering, on each text layer you have created, select layer styles

(b) I tick Bevel and outer glow, but you can experiment here and see what looks good.

FINISHED PRODUCT

Step 19: And voila a finished Thumbnail.

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