 Hey guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rossell. Today's video is going to be a quick one about how to create a banner image in YouTube before your YouTube channel using the GIMP open source photo editor available for Linux Ubuntu and other distros really really amazing tool. So basically this is going to be just the really really simple part of it. There are other videos I've seen about using GIMP for this purpose. They show some more features I'm going to show less in the way of advanced stuff and actual logo creation I'm just going to show the kind of how to get going with it parts of this. So basically Your YouTube dimensions are currently as follows. They are 2560 by 1440 pixels, right? So what you want to do in the first instance is create a banner for yourself in those dimensions And I've gone ahead and just filled it with white. So it's just white color there and with those dimensions Now the thing about YouTube is that if you put stuff here or here, it's not necessarily going to make it into It's not going to render on all devices. So, you know, if someone's looking at it from a phone or looking at it from a tablet It's not guaranteed But YouTube does give you at the time of recording and I say that because the dimensions tend to change over time. At the time of recording the text and logo safe area is a 1546 by 423 pixel Rectangle that is centered on the on the horizontal and vertical axes on the X and Y So all you really need to do to make sure that you're the logo you're designing in a GIMP You want to basically keep your artwork and your logo within this area and so that it's it renders basically, okay? So here's what here's the method. I have been employing to do this So I create a new layer and I call this layer the safe text area guide now firstly put plop in those dimensions, which are going to be here 1546 and 423 now if you want to be smart, there is a way to be smart. You can subtract 2560 Minus 1546 that's going to give you a number. Sorry. I can't remember what number that is divide that number by two And that's going to be your Y. Sorry. That's going to be your X offset The division by two is going to make it equal on the equal on both sides and then you can do 5th sorry 1440 minus 423 and then divide the Divide that number by two and that'll give you a that'll center the image on the Y axis Okay, that'll make this and this equal and this and this equal But you don't even need to do that But that's what these that's that's if you want to use these offset X and Y and save yourself a step You can do that. I'm going to give the four. I'm going to fill that up with the foreground color so it stands out now click okay, and what you're going to get is the guiding rectangle if you will But the problem is that it's not in the right place. It's just stuck there on the left So fortunately there is a tool in GIMP. It's called the align tool and it's pretty now So I use the legacy icon set most people clearly do not there was the the most recent one But if you have the legacy set, it's the alignment logo is this one It's pretty logical because it's got four little arrows left right top down and the rectangles in the bottom So click on to this guy and then click the layer you want to align. That's important You need to actually click on the layer in this case this box, right? So when I did you got these four little Grabby things on the side of it. Sorry. I don't I don't know the correct name for those Then I go out of your layer option tab and click into the tool options tab Now I want to align even though it doesn't make a difference in this case Just just as a best practice we're lying it relative to the image So we're centering it on the entirety of the canvas and not anything else And then it's really easy. You just need to do two clicks. This is going to be a line in the center So now you can see it is perfectly aligned There and if we were to measure this area in pixels and this area in pixels We would get the same as if we subtracted two five sixty from fifteen forty six and divided in two And then we need to do it like this and now we are good You can just see visually that's right slap bang in the center of our canvas. So this is all good So now what I do is I just kind of create a new layer And I just kind of you know, I'm gonna actually build Into this layer and I let's say want to put a bit of so I just feel that was the background color Text goes here Now that box we're seeing is the safe text area So you wouldn't want to necessarily want to fill it all the way up as text But just in case we did for whatever reason So long as it's with anywhere within this rectangle, you're good to go So that's why I give it a different color other people do that alpha two selection and do other tricks This is my methodology now You might be wondering well Is that ugly rectangle going to render in this ugly logo? The answer is no all you need to do is get your logo as you like it get everything good Make sure everything's in the box and then before you export simply Make the guidance box invisible and what you can do is save this as a file and you know When if you want to work on the logo of the artwork a bit more You can just turn the guidance box back on turn it off and then export when you're actually rendering your artwork For YouTube and that is it That's the quick and dirty method for creating a YouTube cover image artwork using the GIMP open source photo editor