29 - Cover Image

About this video

This lesson walks through making a full video thumbnail/cover image inside CapCut’s cover design tool. From the export dialog, clicking Edit Cover lets you pick a still frame, but the creator recommends clicking New to open the full cover design dialog, which he describes as connecting to the CapCut website and working like Canva. He starts from a fitness challenge template, replaces its picture by selecting a frame from the video itself, then edits the image with filters, effects such as noise and fisheye, and sharpening — set to around 68 or 70, noting thumbnails should be a little sharper than normal. He uses auto background removal with customize/erase brush tools to isolate a bowl of ice cream, warms and saturates the color, places it on a pink background, and builds the text ‘ice cream secrets,’ grouping and aligning the text layers. He adds a yellow border by using a full-screen shape with a thick stroke and no fill, adds a yellow starburst shape behind the ice cream using Arrange/Backward layer controls, and adds sparkle stickers for extra flair before saving. On export, the cover file appears in the same folder as the video, and exporting through the dialog can upload the thumbnail to YouTube automatically.

Key takeaways

• Use New in the Edit Cover dialog to open CapCut’s full cover designer instead of settling for a single still frame
• Start from a template, then replace its image with a frame selected directly from your own video
• Apply sharpening around 68-70 and use auto background removal plus erase/customize brushes to isolate the subject
• Create a border with a shape stretched to screen size, thick yellow stroke, and fill set to none; layer shapes behind the subject with Arrange > Backward
• Save the cover and check the export folder — the cover sits alongside the video and can auto-upload to YouTube via the export dialog

Episode details: published January 7, 2026 · 7:06 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Kevin Stratvert’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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