🖼️ Thumbnails built to be clicked.

Thumbnail Maker

Thumbnails built to be clicked. Set the options to suit you, and download the result at full resolution with no watermark.

🖼️
Upload a photo to start

Click anywhere in this box or drag a photo in. Set the options on the left, then hit Generate — your original stays untouched, you always see both.

+ Choose a photo
JPG · PNG · WEBP, up to 10MB

See it in action — real before & after

Thumbnail Maker — before and after
Made with Thumbnail Maker — the same thing your upload goes through.

How to use Thumbnail Maker

01

Upload your image

JPG, PNG or WEBP. If the asset is going to be cropped several ways, start from the widest, highest-resolution version you have.

02

Choose the platform and shape

Square, portrait, wide, circle-safe, bold or minimal. The choice sets the ratio and where the subject sits inside it.

03

Download and post

Correct dimensions, full resolution, no watermark. It uploads without the platform re-cropping it for you.

Why use Thumbnail Maker

What Thumbnail Maker does

Thumbnails built to be clicked.

Safe areas respected

Cover images have a profile photo over one corner and buttons over another. The subject is placed clear of both.

Legible at thumbnail size

Most feed images are first seen very small. High contrast and a simple focal point are what survive that.

Room left for text

Deliberate empty space where a headline or caption goes, rather than a full-bleed image with nowhere to put type.

Consistent across a profile

Avatar, banner and post images that read as one identity instead of three unrelated pictures.

One source, every shape

Generate square, portrait, wide and circular versions from a single upload.

What Thumbnail Maker changes

Turn this into a high-impact video thumbnail: the person framed from the chest up with an excited, open-mouthed expression, pointing toward the empty side of the frame. Dress them in something bold and bright, like a red knit sweater, with their own hair. Seat them at a desk with a laptop and a small plant, against a saturated background of deep blue and red light, with a strong glow separating them from it. Punchy contrast and colour, and a clear area beside them for a big headline. If text is given below, set it there in bold white, yellow and red lettering with a red arrow pointing at it; otherwise add no text. Preserve the same person's recognizable identity from the uploaded reference: face shape, forehead, cheekbones, jawline, eye shape and spacing, eyebrows, nose, lips, natural asymmetry, age appearance, skin tone and distinctive features. Do not replace them with a generic AI face or beautify/idealize their features. Keep natural skin texture and pores; avoid waxy smoothing, exaggerated eyes, reshaped facial features and artificial symmetry. Change only what the app's requested transformation requires. For photographic results, use realistic camera detail: natural skin texture and pores, believable eyes and hair strands, coherent lighting and shadows, correct anatomy and perspective, and matching sharpness across face, neck and body. Avoid waxy skin, over-retouching, distorted features, face-morphing and pasted-on faces. If the app intentionally creates artwork, render the requested medium consistently across the whole image instead of forcing photorealism.

Your face, bone structure and skin tone are held fixed on every generation — only what is described above is changed.

Thumbnail Maker for every slot a profile has

A profile is a set of images with different jobs. Each one is cropped, masked and overlaid differently.

Profile pictures and avatars

Circle-safe, legible at 40 pixels, recognisable as the same person or brand across platforms.

Banners and cover images

Wide, composed around the elements the platform lays over them.

Feed posts

Square and 4:5, which is the ratio that occupies the most vertical space in most feeds.

Stories and reels covers

9:16 with the top and bottom left clear of interface chrome.

Key highlights of Thumbnail Maker

Benefits

Fast enough to keep up

Social content is time-sensitive; this is minutes, not an afternoon.

No watermark

Nothing overlaid, at full resolution.

Credits never expire

One purchase, used whenever the next post needs an image.

Nothing to install

It works on a phone or a laptop. No desktop app, no plugin, no account needed to look around.

No subscription needed

Buy a one-time pack whose credits never expire, or go monthly for the lowest price per credit and cancel any time.

What people use it for

What it is mainly used for

Thumbnails built to be clicked. Set the options to suit you, and download the result at full resolution with no watermark.

Link preview cards

The image that shows up when a page is shared, which is often the first thing anyone sees of a site.

Ad creative variants

Several ratios and crops of one concept, for testing across placements.

Team and community profiles

Consistent avatars across a group, which makes a community look organised.

Seasonal profile refreshes

A quick restyle for a campaign or a holiday, without redesigning anything.

Prompt ideas

Say where the subject should sit and where the text is going. Social composition is mostly about reserving space, and a prompt that does not mention the text is the reason the headline ends up over someone's face.

Avoid generated text

Ask for space for text rather than for text itself — generated lettering is still unreliable, and real type will always look better.

Be concrete, not complimentary

"Soft light from the left, plain grey background" gives the model something to act on. "Beautiful, high quality, 8k" gives it nothing at all.

Change one thing at a time

If a result is close, edit a single detail and run it again. Rewriting the whole prompt gives you an unrelated image and no information about what the change did.

Say what must not change

A short exclusion — "do not change the face", "keep the label text" — is often more effective than any amount of positive description.

Keep it short

Three or four specific clauses beat a paragraph. Long prompts dilute every instruction in them, including the one you cared about.

Name the framing

Close-up, head and shoulders, full body, centred, offset. Framing decides what the image is actually of.

More about Thumbnail Maker

Upload, pick the platform and the shape, and download. Each generation costs 2 credits from a one-time pack, so producing the same asset in four ratios is a few cents rather than an afternoon in a design tool.

Every platform crops differently, and each one crops in a way that is easy to forget until it has already happened. A rectangular avatar masked into a circle loses the top of someone's head. A cover photo has a profile picture sitting over one corner. Thumbnail Maker composes for the shape the image will actually appear in.

The size that matters is the smallest one. Most feed images are seen first at a couple of hundred pixels, and many at forty. Anything depending on fine detail or low contrast simply disappears at that scale, which is why the strongest social images are almost always the simplest.

Getting the best result from Thumbnail Maker

  • Start from the largest, least compressed original you have — a screenshot of a photo has already lost detail that cannot be recovered.
  • Soft, even light in the source photo gives the best result almost regardless of what you are generating.
  • Judge every result at full size, not zoomed out. Problems hide at small sizes.
  • Generate two or three times before deciding. Results vary between runs, and the first is not reliably the best.
  • Check hands, text, jewellery and glasses in any result before sharing it — those are still where image models most often slip.
  • Choose the aspect ratio before generating rather than cropping afterwards.
  • If one model ignores part of your instruction, switch to the other and run it again.
  • Keep the original file. It is a better base for the next attempt than a generated image is.

It runs online — nothing to install. Explore the rest of our AI Creative Apps, or open the full AI photo editor for more control.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the thumbnail maker work?
Thumbnails built to be clicked. Upload your image, set the options on the left — they are written into the instruction the AI receives — then hit Generate. You see the original and the result side by side, so you can always compare before downloading.
What photo should I upload?
A clear, front-facing, well-lit photo gives the most faithful result. Heavy sunglasses, extreme angles and deep shadows all make the face harder to preserve.
Is the thumbnail maker free?
The free tools on this site are unlimited. This one is an AI app, so it uses credits. Each generation costs 2 credits. Packs start at $2, they are a one-time purchase and they never expire.
Will it still look like me?
That is the instruction the prompt leads with: keep the face, bone structure and skin tone exactly, and change only the styling. If a result drifts, run it again — generation is not deterministic, and a second pass usually lands.
Do you watermark the download?
No. Every export is full resolution with nothing added, on any pack.
Will the image be the right size for the platform?
Yes — choose the platform or the ratio before generating and the output matches those dimensions, so the platform has no reason to re-crop or heavily recompress it. Picking the ratio up front matters: cropping afterwards throws away part of the frame you may have needed.
Will my profile picture work as a circle?
Choose the circle-safe option, or say "composed for a circular avatar, head centred, nothing important in the corners". Most platforms mask avatars to circles, which is why rectangular compositions so often lose the top of someone's head.
Can it put text on the image?
It can leave room for text, which is the better approach. Generated lettering is still unreliable — misspellings and malformed characters are common — and real type added afterwards will always look sharper. Ask for "empty space in the upper third" and put the headline there yourself.
Can I make one image work everywhere?
Better to generate each shape from the same source. One image stretched across every placement is the most common reason a subject ends up cropped out or a headline ends up over a face. Each generation costs 2 credits, so four ratios is a few cents.

Find another way to use Pixel Shine

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