Thumbnail guides

3 YouTube thumbnail prompts with real examples

Two cups and two prices tell you what a coffee taste test is about before you read the video title. Here’s the prompt behind that thumbnail, plus two you can adapt for a review or a portrait.

A $5 paper coffee cup on the left and a $50 porcelain cup on the right, with a large white price above each cup.
GPT Image 2.5 Flare placed each price directly above its cup. You can cover either half and still tell what the other costs.

1. Compare two things side by side

Suppose your video asks whether a $50 coffee tastes better than a $5 one. The cups and their prices tell viewers what you tested. Leave the verdict for the video.

Comparison prompt

YouTube thumbnail: split-screen comparison, a paper cup of coffee on the left labeled "$5" and a luxury porcelain cup on the right labeled "$50", clean studio lighting, bold white numbers

Use this prompt in the studio

Swap in your subjects and check the price for your selected models. You can edit the draft before signing up by email. Generating images requires prepaid credit, available in $10 packs.

Make it yours. For a microphone comparison, swap in the two mics you tested and their actual prices. If they look nearly identical, give each a recognizable detail, such as the desk stand on one and the boom arm on the other.

2. Put a short headline on a product review

Use the words you would print on the thumbnail. Quotation marks tell the model which words belong in the image. You still need to check where it puts them.

Headline prompt

YouTube thumbnail: shocked man holding a cracked smartphone, huge bold yellow text "DON'T BUY THIS" with a black outline, bright red background, high contrast

Yellow words read "DON’T BUY THIS" on red. A man holds a cracked phone, and his head overlaps the bottom of "BUY."
Seedream 5 Lite spelled the headline correctly. The man’s hair cuts into “BUY,” which is easy to miss while checking the spelling.

What to change. Keep the headline and color. Replace “huge bold yellow text” with “one line of yellow text across the top quarter, with the person’s head entirely below it.” Change the wording too if your review comes to a different verdict. Compare other models on the same headline.

3. Leave space to add your own title

If you use the same typeface on every episode, generate the photo first and add the lettering in your editor. Choose which side needs to stay quiet before you write the prompt.

Portrait prompt

YouTube thumbnail: close-up of a woman laughing on a rainy Tokyo street at night, neon reflections, cinematic lighting, empty space on the left for a title, no text

A woman laughs under a clear umbrella on the right side of a rainy street. The left third is darker and blurred.
Nano Banana Pro kept the left third soft enough for lettering. The umbrella, face, and brightest signs sit farther right.

Make it yours. For a night-photography tutorial, replace the woman with a photographer checking a camera. Leave the placement instruction in. If the title is hard to read over the streetlights, ask for dark, out-of-focus pavement behind the letters. Check your finished portrait at feed size.

Check the thumbnail beside your video title

Open the free feed-size thumbnail preview. For the coffee comparison, can you match each price to the right cup at a glance? For the phone review, can you read all three words? For the portrait, add your title first and check whether it covers the face. YouTube also recommends checking how the design reads across devices. YouTube’s thumbnail and title tips.

The three images are individual outputs from our side-by-side model benchmark. The benchmark shows how each model handled placement, lettering, and subject detail on one attempt per prompt.

Make a thumbnail for your video