Designing Framed Thumbnail Images With Titles

I will show you examples of thumbnails I have made lately. Then, for each one, I will show you the component parts: the public domain clip art materials I have used, the way I work with the text and how I make the frames.

I had fun figuring these out and I hope you have fun taking these ideas and expanding on them according to your own personal styles.

If you want to use the same photo enhancement software as me, download it for free here.

1. Use the dropper (on the tools window) to select one of the red tones from the exclamation mark or any other color you may choose.
2. Make sure the color of your frame is shown as the "secondary" color because that is what the program will choose to make the frame.
3. Click "Image" and then "Canvas Size" and make sure the image is in the middle field so that the frame will be even all around it.
4. Make sure that there is a check mark in the box above that says "maintain aspect ratio".
5. Click "OK".

That's all there is to it!

Now, with the mouse on the little bar indicated by the blue arrow above, rotate the hand. If the sticky note and the hand are on separate layers, only the hand will rotate.The first time I did this, I discovered that the lower part of the hand was too close to the edge of the image and upon rotating, some of the image disappeared. You can solve this problem by going to "Image" and clicking "Canvas Size". Increase the height only and you will have room to rotate without losing any of the image.

When the hand is parallel to the left-hand margin of the sticky note, click "OK". The layers window will close.

You may find that part of the edge of the sticky note is covered by the hand layer. You can correct this by opening "Layers" and then "Layer Properties". Click where it says, "Normal" to open the various options and click "Multiple". Like magic, the sticky note edge will reappear. Now you can merge the two layers into one by clicking on

Pull down the menu on the "Layers" function on the toolbar and click on "Add a new layer". The new layer will be exactly the same size as the entire image. If you select "Multiple" on "Layer Properties" you will be able to see both layers while you work on the upper layer alone. Write your text and then decide what color, font and size you would like it to be. I decided to justify my text to the right as it seemed to fit the design best that way. Play around with the text until you are satisfied. In this case, I also rotated the text layer so it lined up parallel to the sides of the sticky note. Remember, you can also move the text layer around without affecting the other layer.

When you are satisfied with the text, position, size, font and color, merge the layers as you did for the hand and sticky note layers.

First I picked up one of the flesh colors and used it to paint the background (see Image A above). Then I added a thin white frame (see Image B above - I know, the white is barely visible). The original image was 5.12 inches wide and, after making sure the secondary color was white, I increased the canvas size to 5.2 inches.

Adjusting the secondary color to match the background (using the dropper tool), I added another frame by increasing the canvas size to 5.25 inches and then another white frame to increase the canvas to 5.45 inches (see Image C below). The final colored frame brings the canvas size to 5.58 inches (Image D below).

The thumbnail to this article is very simple to construct. First, open a new file on paint.net and, using the "Image" button on the tool bar and clicking "Resize", you get the window below. I usually set the image size for 6 inches by 6 inches square.  The rest of the steps are numbered:

1. I used the paint-can on the tool bar to paint the entire canvas a solid reddish color.
2. I opened the public domain snowflake image (http://www.clker.com/clipart-snowflakes-7.html) onto paint.net and used "Image" and "Resize" to make it 6x6 inches. In this case, the slight distortion of the image was not a problem.
3. Under "Edit", I clicked "Select All", then "Copy" and then I opened the red image and still under "Edit", I clicked" Paste onto New Layer". I repositioned the snowflakes to fill the red image exactly as I wanted, getting the image below left, consisting of 2 layers, the red background and the white snowflakes.

    

4.  I softened the snowflakes by clicking on "Layers" and "Properties". This opens a window that   lets me play with the "Opacity" of the layer (see below right image). By reducing it by about half, I now have enough of a design to be interesting, but nothing that would overwhelm the text I will add.

5.  I then added the text, selected the font, the size and the position and then added frames that looked pleasing to me as instructed above for the other thumbnail images.