Thumbfa.st walkthrough - AI thumbnail workflow

So basically you can draw an id.

In order to start to draw you can click on add style reference.

And here you can click on draw beta like this because it's a beta feature.

It may have some bugs and some issue, but it's completely fine.

And here you will have a drawing editor.

What is important to know is, is that you have the basic tool here like square, round, straight line, arrow and stuff.

You will have text.

So this text will be shown on the thumbnail.

It's really important to understand this where you can have a few style like this.

So this kind of text will be shown on the thumbnail and you have annotation.

Annotation is small information you want the model to know.

So for example if I come back here and I leave this example and I go to my thumbnail just here, you can see that I add annotation.

This annotation will have a purpose of explaining what you are drawing.

So here I write hyphen.

So the model can know that this is an hyphen, this is an end.

So this is really important.

You can also have some pre made elements.

For example you can add a person, you can add a star badge like this or you can add an explosion, basically some small element.

You can also add any image you save on your account.

So for example here I want to add this arc icon.

So sometimes it takes a lot of time because it needs to download the icon.

But as you can see after some time you have all the elements that can be added like this.

So this is really useful to easily add and structure your thumbnail.

When everything is done.

For example, you have this result you can go back to your app save and launch generation.

So as you can see here I make this prompt Melvin 4.

So this one is not the best one, this one was good, my used one is this one.

So here I add my image, I add the image I want inside the phone and I write just here showing app interface with the background, blah blah, blah blah blah blah.

And this create this kind of render at the end.

So as you can see it's respect the inspiration and we can just create the thumbnail we want with this annotation.

You will see that we will have perfect understanding of you have a hand, you have something like this and everything you can imagine.

So annotation is really important to make the thumbnail feel alive.

Okay, So let's try for fun an example.

So you can see the full process.

So here I go in the new thumbnail here I make still reference, I make a draw.

And here you can create anything.

Okay, so for example, I can make a big square here and a second square here and a third square here.

And here you can explain what is it.

Okay, with annotation, I add an annotation here and I can write.

So here we can understand that this is a podium and here we can write or add some image.

So for example I can make here the new Fable 5 model.

So here, boop.

You can resize it obviously.

So with shift it's keeping the ratio Here we can add this, write Fable 5 in orange.

Boom, boom, boom.

Big.

And here we write GPT 5.5 poop and smaller.

And Opus 3.5.

4.5 I think.

No, it's 4.8.

So here we have our thumbnail.

We make add to reference.

So here you see, we make this shitty simple drawing.

Obviously you can add some image here on top.

So for example I can add this and I can add.

First one is a fable five with butterfly number.

Second one is GPT 5.5 with codex up.

And third one is cloth with opus 4.8.

And I want the background to be.

And here I can choose this background.

For example background Diesel.

Oasis up.

I want the background to be background dither.

Oasis up.

I add my person.

No, I don't need any person.

And we can generate two thumbnail.

So here we have our drawing.

We add a lot of reference and example like this.

So this is all the image I want.

And I have my drawing that is here.

Now obviously there is a randomness and you will need to use your creativity here because the model will be able to invent anything he wants.

This is pure freedom because you have only one drawing.

And as much as my system prompt is, it's mainly depend on what you prompt because the model will try to follow what you prompt to create a kind of realistic funny YouTube thumbnail here I'm afraid with this image because you can see that it's a bit big.

And I put it here so I don't know how it will look.

Okay, we have a pretty funny thing actually I found it not enough minimalistic and I don't understand what he put hands like this.

But I like the idea.

So I will write keep it simple, don't add text on the top.

But this one actually is really good.

It's really good.

Just he fucked up a bit the icon.

So I Think we just.

I keep it simple and do not add extra text.

Okay, so here.

This one is pretty much.

We have this podium.

We have the second one just here.

This text.

And this text is misplaced.

Okay.

But beside this, it's pretty good.

Okay.

It's really funny.

I don't know.

I don't understand what he's trying to put someone here.

But this one I like.

Just.

Just this icon is a bit fucked up.

So obviously you can just use the edit tool and ask him.

For example, put the Codex app logo on top of the podium.

on top of his text, please.

This kind of stuff.

I really wonder why he generated a human here because he didn't add a person.

I think it's.

It's really because I asked, in the system prompt to create a YouTube thumbnail and he struggled to create a YouTube thumbnail without actually adding this kind of stuff.

But we can see here the creativity was way too high.

Yes, really strange.

But it's interesting.

Like we keep.

We quickly like in 8 variation.

Okay, this one, I'm really unhappy.

I really hate when he start to make this.

But I think put the top of the podium on top of his text.

My prompt was not that Nice.

Put the GPT 5.5 logo on top of the text.

GPT 5.5.

The Codex logo, please.

Okay, let's generate one.

Because he hate for now this logo.

It's really fucked up.

This.

This is the trouble of AI thumbnail is just.

You cannot edit without generating new.

We start to have something nice like it's okay, but it's just an example.

So everything can actually do.

Here is what you can actually do.

I hope you like it.

And tell me in the comments, what do you think about