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"2024 Approved Step-by-Step for Quick Chromakey Application"
Step-by-Step for Quick Chromakey Application
The world of video-making owes much of its magic to small leaps of innovation. One of these leaps is the use of the chroma key background, which most people know by the more colloquial term—green screen.
Chroma key, also known as green screen or blue screen, is a cool hack for seamless visual storytelling, allowing content creators to replace backgrounds with any image or video they want. This technique is widely embraced in film, television, and online content, and has opened the door to limitless creative possibilities. Aside from its ability to maximize creativity, it is also cheap to employ and convenient to set up, which has made it a staple for everyone who works with visuals.
In this simple guide, we’ll delve into the fundamentals of the chroma key effect, how it is used for video making, and how to leverage that as you perfect your visual content.
YouTube Video Background Creating realistic video scenes at your will is easy to complete with Filmora green screen removal.
Create Video Backgrounds Create Video Backgrounds Learn Green Screen
How Does Chroma Key Work?
Chroma Keying is done by singling out a specific color (usually green or blue) from the foreground, removing it, and replacing it with a different background (for example, a sunset). This process typically follows a series of steps:
- Background Selection:
A solid, single-color background, often green or blue, that contrasts well with the subject must be used. The color chosen should not be present in the subject or any props in the camera field to avoid unintentional transparency.
- Color Keying:
This requires the use of specialized visual effects software to key out the chosen color. The green or blue background is designated as transparent, making everything of that color see-through. The software distinguishes between the keyed color and the subject, creating a mask for the transparent areas.
- Foreground Filming:
This involves filming the subject against the live chroma key background. During filming, the chosen background color (green or blue) won’t appear in the final result due to its transparency. The subject is captured as if separately from the isolated background.
- Post-Processing:
In post-production processing, the editor takes the keyed-out color and replaces it with the new background of their choice. This step creates the illusion that the subject is in a different setting or environment. The transparent areas become filled with the chosen background which, if done right, results in a cohesive and visually appealing composition.
Why Green?
Theoretically, the chroma key background can be any solid color. However, the most commonly used colors are studio blue and bright green, with the latter far more common.
The choice of background color depends on the specific requirements of the production and the colors present in the scenes being filmed.
Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)
Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later
Contrast
The less similar your chosen background color is to natural skin tones, the easier to isolate and replace in your footage. Bright green provides a strong contrast to most human skin tones and is less likely to be present in costumes or natural surroundings, making it easier to isolate subjects during the color separation.
Luminance
The color green emits light with greater intensity than blue, allowing for far more effective isolation by cameras during filming. This also means that blue screens demand increased lighting for proper exposure compared to green. This situation may be less than ideal if you lack powerful lighting or you don’t have the big bucks for them.
Digital Sensors
Many digital cameras and sensors are more sensitive to green wavelengths, resulting in cleaner and more accurate color keying during post-processing. Modern technology has also evolved to optimize for a green background, making it a more practical choice for the chroma key effect.
Wardrobe and Set Design
Bright green occurs less naturally in costumes and set designs than other colors, making green the optimal choice for reducing the likelihood of color spill and keying issues. However, if you know your scene will have lots of green, it is probably best to film with a blue screen, so there’s less risk of color spill and less post-production work.
Setting up Your Own Chroma Key Studio
Setting up your chroma key is convenient and straightforward, but there are some key factors to consider while setting up to ensure maximal performance.
Choosing the Right Background Color
The first step in the chroma key setup is selecting the right background color to be keyed out. This choice determines your effective color separation and ensures a smooth keying process during editing. Choosing a chroma-key background color that contrasts distinctly with the subject’s colors is essential for effective color separation. This prevents unintentional transparency, color spill, and ensures a polished final result.
Lighting Considerations
Lighting is an important part of the chroma-keying process. Bold, uniform, and consistent lighting on both the subject and the background makes it easy to delineate one from the other fully. This minimizes shadows and variations in color, creating a smooth and seamless keying process. Multiple diffuse lights from different angles are often used to illuminate the green screen evenly.
Positioning/Camera
Proper subject and camera placement are necessary to ensure an even color-keying process during post-production. To prevent shadow interference, the green screen should be smooth, tense, and without wrinkles or shadows.
High-quality cameras are essential every time, especially for chroma keying. Images with better definition are easier to key, so camera quality significantly affects the outcome. Even if your camera isn’t the best, merely shooting well can ensure a clean color-keying process during editing, resulting in professional-looking visuals.
Recording Tips for Chroma Key
- Proper Lighting
Maintaining uniform and well-defined lighting during recording is essential for a successful chroma-keying process. This consistency ensures a seamless keying process during post-production.
- Keep Distance from the Green Screen
The optimal distance between the subject and the green screen minimizes color spill and allows for natural movements. Proper distance between subject and background allows for easier isolation of the background and much smoother post-editing. A recommended starting point for the issue is around 6 to 10 feet from the background.
- Subjects and Clothing
As mentioned before, the choice of costume for Selecting appropriate clothing that doesn’t match the chroma key color prevents transparency issues. Subjects also have to be positioned in such a way that there is minimal light interference and reflection. These contribute to a flawless chroma key outcome.
3 Basic Troubleshooting Strategies
- Color Spill
Sometimes, reflected light from your green background can be cast on your subject and may remain so when the background light is keyed out. This phenomenon is known as a color spill. It is usually because of uneven lighting or shooting around reflecting surfaces. Avoiding spill can differentiate between good and lousy chroma key aftereffects.
Human hair is one area where color spill can show up unsuspectingly. Due to the translucency of hair, it is common for some unintended light to seep through. This allows some background visibility, which you do not want with a chroma key. This is especially notable with lighter hair colors like blond hair.
There are ways to account for this. Many video-editing software have features such as spill suppression and screen matte adjustments that can enhance the final footage. Specialized plugins also go a long way in ensuring minimizing spill. Addressing spill correction tackles unwanted green artifacts and ensures a clean keying process.
- Poor Lighting
Suboptimal green screen lighting can lead to inconsistencies in keying and editing, undermining your product. One way to avoid this is to light the screen and subject separately. Another tip, although expensive, is using multiple diffuse light sources and trying to maintain even lighting across every square foot of your scene. Super bright or dark spots can ruin your output, so it’s worth the extra effort if you don’t want to deal with problematic post-production.
- Poorly Refined Edges
Chroma keying should leave your videos with crisp, defined, natural-looking edges. But post-production editing can make all the difference if it doesn’t come out to your taste. Softening and refining edges make a smoother transition between the foreground object and the new background. Light adjustments to edge thickness and screen matte settings can also help enhance overall visual quality and add finesse to your work.
Conclusion
Green screen photography produces excellent results, and its ease of use makes it indispensable for videographers of all levels. In this guide, we’ve discussed chroma key technology, its role in the industry, and how to apply it to your craft to elevate visual content.
Chroma key, also known as green screen or blue screen, is a cool hack for seamless visual storytelling, allowing content creators to replace backgrounds with any image or video they want. This technique is widely embraced in film, television, and online content, and has opened the door to limitless creative possibilities. Aside from its ability to maximize creativity, it is also cheap to employ and convenient to set up, which has made it a staple for everyone who works with visuals.
In this simple guide, we’ll delve into the fundamentals of the chroma key effect, how it is used for video making, and how to leverage that as you perfect your visual content.
YouTube Video Background Creating realistic video scenes at your will is easy to complete with Filmora green screen removal.
Create Video Backgrounds Create Video Backgrounds Learn Green Screen
How Does Chroma Key Work?
Chroma Keying is done by singling out a specific color (usually green or blue) from the foreground, removing it, and replacing it with a different background (for example, a sunset). This process typically follows a series of steps:
- Background Selection:
A solid, single-color background, often green or blue, that contrasts well with the subject must be used. The color chosen should not be present in the subject or any props in the camera field to avoid unintentional transparency.
- Color Keying:
This requires the use of specialized visual effects software to key out the chosen color. The green or blue background is designated as transparent, making everything of that color see-through. The software distinguishes between the keyed color and the subject, creating a mask for the transparent areas.
- Foreground Filming:
This involves filming the subject against the live chroma key background. During filming, the chosen background color (green or blue) won’t appear in the final result due to its transparency. The subject is captured as if separately from the isolated background.
- Post-Processing:
In post-production processing, the editor takes the keyed-out color and replaces it with the new background of their choice. This step creates the illusion that the subject is in a different setting or environment. The transparent areas become filled with the chosen background which, if done right, results in a cohesive and visually appealing composition.
Why Green?
Theoretically, the chroma key background can be any solid color. However, the most commonly used colors are studio blue and bright green, with the latter far more common.
The choice of background color depends on the specific requirements of the production and the colors present in the scenes being filmed.
Free Download For Win 7 or later(64-bit)
Free Download For macOS 10.14 or later
Contrast
The less similar your chosen background color is to natural skin tones, the easier to isolate and replace in your footage. Bright green provides a strong contrast to most human skin tones and is less likely to be present in costumes or natural surroundings, making it easier to isolate subjects during the color separation.
Luminance
The color green emits light with greater intensity than blue, allowing for far more effective isolation by cameras during filming. This also means that blue screens demand increased lighting for proper exposure compared to green. This situation may be less than ideal if you lack powerful lighting or you don’t have the big bucks for them.
Digital Sensors
Many digital cameras and sensors are more sensitive to green wavelengths, resulting in cleaner and more accurate color keying during post-processing. Modern technology has also evolved to optimize for a green background, making it a more practical choice for the chroma key effect.
Wardrobe and Set Design
Bright green occurs less naturally in costumes and set designs than other colors, making green the optimal choice for reducing the likelihood of color spill and keying issues. However, if you know your scene will have lots of green, it is probably best to film with a blue screen, so there’s less risk of color spill and less post-production work.
Setting up Your Own Chroma Key Studio
Setting up your chroma key is convenient and straightforward, but there are some key factors to consider while setting up to ensure maximal performance.
Choosing the Right Background Color
The first step in the chroma key setup is selecting the right background color to be keyed out. This choice determines your effective color separation and ensures a smooth keying process during editing. Choosing a chroma-key background color that contrasts distinctly with the subject’s colors is essential for effective color separation. This prevents unintentional transparency, color spill, and ensures a polished final result.
Lighting Considerations
Lighting is an important part of the chroma-keying process. Bold, uniform, and consistent lighting on both the subject and the background makes it easy to delineate one from the other fully. This minimizes shadows and variations in color, creating a smooth and seamless keying process. Multiple diffuse lights from different angles are often used to illuminate the green screen evenly.
Positioning/Camera
Proper subject and camera placement are necessary to ensure an even color-keying process during post-production. To prevent shadow interference, the green screen should be smooth, tense, and without wrinkles or shadows.
High-quality cameras are essential every time, especially for chroma keying. Images with better definition are easier to key, so camera quality significantly affects the outcome. Even if your camera isn’t the best, merely shooting well can ensure a clean color-keying process during editing, resulting in professional-looking visuals.
Recording Tips for Chroma Key
- Proper Lighting
Maintaining uniform and well-defined lighting during recording is essential for a successful chroma-keying process. This consistency ensures a seamless keying process during post-production.
- Keep Distance from the Green Screen
The optimal distance between the subject and the green screen minimizes color spill and allows for natural movements. Proper distance between subject and background allows for easier isolation of the background and much smoother post-editing. A recommended starting point for the issue is around 6 to 10 feet from the background.
- Subjects and Clothing
As mentioned before, the choice of costume for Selecting appropriate clothing that doesn’t match the chroma key color prevents transparency issues. Subjects also have to be positioned in such a way that there is minimal light interference and reflection. These contribute to a flawless chroma key outcome.
3 Basic Troubleshooting Strategies
- Color Spill
Sometimes, reflected light from your green background can be cast on your subject and may remain so when the background light is keyed out. This phenomenon is known as a color spill. It is usually because of uneven lighting or shooting around reflecting surfaces. Avoiding spill can differentiate between good and lousy chroma key aftereffects.
Human hair is one area where color spill can show up unsuspectingly. Due to the translucency of hair, it is common for some unintended light to seep through. This allows some background visibility, which you do not want with a chroma key. This is especially notable with lighter hair colors like blond hair.
There are ways to account for this. Many video-editing software have features such as spill suppression and screen matte adjustments that can enhance the final footage. Specialized plugins also go a long way in ensuring minimizing spill. Addressing spill correction tackles unwanted green artifacts and ensures a clean keying process.
- Poor Lighting
Suboptimal green screen lighting can lead to inconsistencies in keying and editing, undermining your product. One way to avoid this is to light the screen and subject separately. Another tip, although expensive, is using multiple diffuse light sources and trying to maintain even lighting across every square foot of your scene. Super bright or dark spots can ruin your output, so it’s worth the extra effort if you don’t want to deal with problematic post-production.
- Poorly Refined Edges
Chroma keying should leave your videos with crisp, defined, natural-looking edges. But post-production editing can make all the difference if it doesn’t come out to your taste. Softening and refining edges make a smoother transition between the foreground object and the new background. Light adjustments to edge thickness and screen matte settings can also help enhance overall visual quality and add finesse to your work.
Conclusion
Green screen photography produces excellent results, and its ease of use makes it indispensable for videographers of all levels. In this guide, we’ve discussed chroma key technology, its role in the industry, and how to apply it to your craft to elevate visual content.
The Ultimate Guide to Finding Unique Video Graphics Online
6 Completely Different Places to Get Icons and Logos for YouTube Videos
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
Whether you need YouTube icons and logos to use as pop-up graphics in your videos, to serve as your channel icon, to use as watermarks, or to liven up your channel art or video thumbnails – don’t worry. There are lots of places to get them.
We’ve made a list of 6 sites where you can download icons and logos for free for YouTub videos, and explained how they work.
You might also want to check out these YouTube channels offering free profile picture templates .
1. Flaticon.com
Key Points:
- Great selection of icons/logos
- It’s easy to change the colors before you download
I’m putting Flaticon.com right at the top of this list because it has something that really sets it apart from the other sites on this list – it lets you edit pre-made icons before you download them.
You start out on Flaticon by searching for a theme like beauty, gaming, flowers, or emojis. I searched for ‘birds’ and found these cuties.
These aren’t all the birds on Flaticon, just a few. They had a huge selection in all the different searches I tried.
I clicked on the brown bird to open up the download screen, and then clicked into ‘Edit icon’. There may be a pop up that tells you editing tools are only available to registered users, but it’s wrong. Just close it and keep going, unless you want to register.
You can edit the colors in your icon just by clicking on the color you want to replace, and then clicking on the color in the color selector you want to replace it with. I made my birdie FLY.
I never apologize for puns.
Once you like the look of your icon, just click Download. You will be prompted to choose a format. PNG is the most popular because it is supported the most places (including on YouTube), and because it allows for a transparent background.
After clicking on a format you will also be prompted to choose a size for your image. It’s always best to go with the largest image you can – its way easier to shrink things and keep them looking good than it is to have to enlarge them.
Flaticon has a great selection, it’s free, and they make it really easy to edit your creations. I would strongly recommend this site to anyone in the market for an icon or logo.
Flaticon asks that you include an “Icon made by [author link] from <www.flaticon.com> ” somewhere (i.e. video description, channel ‘about’ section) when you use their icons for free.
2. Freepik.com
Key Points:
- Good selection of icons.
- No way to customise them on the site.
- Attribution requried.
On freepik, you start off by searching for a theme (like the genre of your YouTube title or the topic of a video, i.e. ‘makeup’ or ‘music’). I searched for ‘cat’.
A few of the sets available on freepik. The crown icon means you need to be a paying Premium member, but most things are free.
You can’t edit on freepik, and in order to download for free you need to include an attribution/credit to freepik where you use the images.
You do not choose what format to download your images in on freepik. When you hit ‘Free Download’ it will automatically download a zip file which will contain both a .jpg and a .eps. The EPS is editable in any ‘vector graphics editor’, like Adobe Illustrator, and YouTube supports .jpg files.
3. Seeklogo.net
Key Points:
- Logos from major brands
- Great for channels that do product reviews
Seeklogo.net has a slightly more corporate slant than some of the other sites on this list. It has logos for a lot of major companies and brands available for download.
In the ‘search’ on Seeklogo.net, you can type in the name of a brand or industry and see if the well-known logo you’re looking for is available. This may be especially useful for people with sports related channels since they have a lot of logos for major teams.
I searched for YouTube – you never know when you might need the YouTube logo.
Although the site does not advertise PNG in the list of formats on their front page, downloads do include PNG versions (which is useful if you need transparency and don’t have a program which can edit vector files, like .eps).
4. IconArchive.com
Key Points:
- Site has an office/business slant.
- Detailed search tool lets you sort by color, theme, etc.
IconArchive has a huge selection of icons with somewhat of an office/business slant. I searched for ‘flower’ and half the results were of file-folders with flowers on them.
Could be cool for a lifestyle video about school or work?
My favorite thing about IconArchive is its search features. It allows you to filter results by color, size (down to the specific resolution), category, background color, style, and a lot more.
Color is under ‘Display’, meaning that it won’t filter out results that have different colors it’ll just list the color you select first.
The ‘Category’ filter is useful because there are some genres you probably recognize there, like ‘Lifestyle’. However, you should be careful not to over-filter. This site is pretty literal in how it categorizes. For example – there are no ‘flower’ images under ‘Lifestyle’.
Downloads are available in different sizes and formats including PNG. PNG is always a good option because it is supported by YouTube and includes transparent backgrounds.
Note that all of your different download buttons will be located underneath your image. They favor those ads that look like ‘download’ or ‘start now’ buttons, and the ads sit right next to the images on the right, so it’s easy to get confused and click on the ad.
5. Logaster.com
Key Points:
- You’ll have to pay for larger images.
- Focused more on businesses.
- Incorporates your channel name.
Logaster is really a service for businesses – they make and sell business cards, letterheads, and other office-y things like that. However, they are still a good choice for YouTubers because they have a free logo creator. Sort of.
You actually have to pay $9.99 to get larger images and remove the watermark, but the process is free.
When you arrive on Logaster there’s a button right on their home page that says ‘Create a logo for free’. Click on it.
In Step 1 it’ll ask for your company name and an activity type. You just need to put in your channel name and choose something from the activity drop down that you focus on in your videos.
My heart burns with the secret desire to be YouTube’s Neil Degrasse Tyson (it doesn’t really, but he is super cool) so I tried ‘Katie Does Science’ and ‘Science, Studies, Education’. Here’s what it came up with:
There are 10 pages of suggestions!
You can see how, unless you have a short channel name, you’re probably not going to be able to use any of these as an icon, but a lot of them would look cool on a banner. There’s an ‘Edit Logo Concept’ button which allows you to make changes to the layout, but you can still only choose from preset layouts. For example, some logo concepts allow you to choose whether the icon is above your text or next to it.
After you click ‘save’ in the last step you’ll be prompted to provide an email address and password. Once you sign in, you’ll be able to download a small logo for free, or purchase the higher resolution image.
I personally wouldn’t recommend buying an image from here unless your channel is for your small business and you need things like branded business cards and letterhead. This site might be better for gathering inspiration than actually downloading a logo from.
6. Icons8.com
Key Points:
- You need to link back to them to use their icons.
- You can edit the colors on the site and even add details.
- There’s a size limit on the free service (100x100px)
At Icons8 they have free and paid services. If you download an icon for free it will be a PNG file (which should be fine, YouTube supports PNG and it’s good for transparency) that is no larger than 100x100px. This is not ideal since YouTube recommends 800x800px for profile pictures, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. Profile pictures render down to much smaller than that.
You will also need to link to Icons8 if you use their icons for free (i.e. in the ‘about’ section of your channel page).
To get started on Icons8, type something into the search bar on the home page that you think might work as an icon or as part of whatever graphics you have planned. I typed in ‘game’ for this one, since gaming is the biggest genre on YouTube. Here are a few of the results that came up:
Lower down in the results there were different kinds of sports balls, hand-held gaming systems, playing cards, joy sticks, baseball caps and more.
After you find an icon you like, click on it and it will appear on the right side of your screen where you’ll be able to make a few changes (an editing screen will pop up once you start clicking on things). You can edit your colors, overlay small decals, add text, and add a border, change your background and adjust your size. Here’s the editing screen:
You can give your icon a pretty different look from its default. Check this out:
You cannot download your icon from the editing screen. You need to click Save, and then download it from the main display screen here:
You can change the size with that drop down menu, but you’ll be limited in your options if you don’t want to pay.
I downloaded my image and tried to see how it would look as an icon/profile picture. As you can see, it was pretty blurry in the preview:
However, the preview is larger than the actual profile picture. Once I set it, it looked alright.
Looking for somewhere you can build your own icon/logo from scratch? Check out this list of logo makers .
After downloading the icons or logos, it is time to add them to your YouTube video. Here I recommend our Wondershare Filmora video editor . Below is a video tutorial about how to add a logo to video in Filmora . Remember to download the free trial version to test.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
Whether you need YouTube icons and logos to use as pop-up graphics in your videos, to serve as your channel icon, to use as watermarks, or to liven up your channel art or video thumbnails – don’t worry. There are lots of places to get them.
We’ve made a list of 6 sites where you can download icons and logos for free for YouTub videos, and explained how they work.
You might also want to check out these YouTube channels offering free profile picture templates .
1. Flaticon.com
Key Points:
- Great selection of icons/logos
- It’s easy to change the colors before you download
I’m putting Flaticon.com right at the top of this list because it has something that really sets it apart from the other sites on this list – it lets you edit pre-made icons before you download them.
You start out on Flaticon by searching for a theme like beauty, gaming, flowers, or emojis. I searched for ‘birds’ and found these cuties.
These aren’t all the birds on Flaticon, just a few. They had a huge selection in all the different searches I tried.
I clicked on the brown bird to open up the download screen, and then clicked into ‘Edit icon’. There may be a pop up that tells you editing tools are only available to registered users, but it’s wrong. Just close it and keep going, unless you want to register.
You can edit the colors in your icon just by clicking on the color you want to replace, and then clicking on the color in the color selector you want to replace it with. I made my birdie FLY.
I never apologize for puns.
Once you like the look of your icon, just click Download. You will be prompted to choose a format. PNG is the most popular because it is supported the most places (including on YouTube), and because it allows for a transparent background.
After clicking on a format you will also be prompted to choose a size for your image. It’s always best to go with the largest image you can – its way easier to shrink things and keep them looking good than it is to have to enlarge them.
Flaticon has a great selection, it’s free, and they make it really easy to edit your creations. I would strongly recommend this site to anyone in the market for an icon or logo.
Flaticon asks that you include an “Icon made by [author link] from <www.flaticon.com> ” somewhere (i.e. video description, channel ‘about’ section) when you use their icons for free.
2. Freepik.com
Key Points:
- Good selection of icons.
- No way to customise them on the site.
- Attribution requried.
On freepik, you start off by searching for a theme (like the genre of your YouTube title or the topic of a video, i.e. ‘makeup’ or ‘music’). I searched for ‘cat’.
A few of the sets available on freepik. The crown icon means you need to be a paying Premium member, but most things are free.
You can’t edit on freepik, and in order to download for free you need to include an attribution/credit to freepik where you use the images.
You do not choose what format to download your images in on freepik. When you hit ‘Free Download’ it will automatically download a zip file which will contain both a .jpg and a .eps. The EPS is editable in any ‘vector graphics editor’, like Adobe Illustrator, and YouTube supports .jpg files.
3. Seeklogo.net
Key Points:
- Logos from major brands
- Great for channels that do product reviews
Seeklogo.net has a slightly more corporate slant than some of the other sites on this list. It has logos for a lot of major companies and brands available for download.
In the ‘search’ on Seeklogo.net, you can type in the name of a brand or industry and see if the well-known logo you’re looking for is available. This may be especially useful for people with sports related channels since they have a lot of logos for major teams.
I searched for YouTube – you never know when you might need the YouTube logo.
Although the site does not advertise PNG in the list of formats on their front page, downloads do include PNG versions (which is useful if you need transparency and don’t have a program which can edit vector files, like .eps).
4. IconArchive.com
Key Points:
- Site has an office/business slant.
- Detailed search tool lets you sort by color, theme, etc.
IconArchive has a huge selection of icons with somewhat of an office/business slant. I searched for ‘flower’ and half the results were of file-folders with flowers on them.
Could be cool for a lifestyle video about school or work?
My favorite thing about IconArchive is its search features. It allows you to filter results by color, size (down to the specific resolution), category, background color, style, and a lot more.
Color is under ‘Display’, meaning that it won’t filter out results that have different colors it’ll just list the color you select first.
The ‘Category’ filter is useful because there are some genres you probably recognize there, like ‘Lifestyle’. However, you should be careful not to over-filter. This site is pretty literal in how it categorizes. For example – there are no ‘flower’ images under ‘Lifestyle’.
Downloads are available in different sizes and formats including PNG. PNG is always a good option because it is supported by YouTube and includes transparent backgrounds.
Note that all of your different download buttons will be located underneath your image. They favor those ads that look like ‘download’ or ‘start now’ buttons, and the ads sit right next to the images on the right, so it’s easy to get confused and click on the ad.
5. Logaster.com
Key Points:
- You’ll have to pay for larger images.
- Focused more on businesses.
- Incorporates your channel name.
Logaster is really a service for businesses – they make and sell business cards, letterheads, and other office-y things like that. However, they are still a good choice for YouTubers because they have a free logo creator. Sort of.
You actually have to pay $9.99 to get larger images and remove the watermark, but the process is free.
When you arrive on Logaster there’s a button right on their home page that says ‘Create a logo for free’. Click on it.
In Step 1 it’ll ask for your company name and an activity type. You just need to put in your channel name and choose something from the activity drop down that you focus on in your videos.
My heart burns with the secret desire to be YouTube’s Neil Degrasse Tyson (it doesn’t really, but he is super cool) so I tried ‘Katie Does Science’ and ‘Science, Studies, Education’. Here’s what it came up with:
There are 10 pages of suggestions!
You can see how, unless you have a short channel name, you’re probably not going to be able to use any of these as an icon, but a lot of them would look cool on a banner. There’s an ‘Edit Logo Concept’ button which allows you to make changes to the layout, but you can still only choose from preset layouts. For example, some logo concepts allow you to choose whether the icon is above your text or next to it.
After you click ‘save’ in the last step you’ll be prompted to provide an email address and password. Once you sign in, you’ll be able to download a small logo for free, or purchase the higher resolution image.
I personally wouldn’t recommend buying an image from here unless your channel is for your small business and you need things like branded business cards and letterhead. This site might be better for gathering inspiration than actually downloading a logo from.
6. Icons8.com
Key Points:
- You need to link back to them to use their icons.
- You can edit the colors on the site and even add details.
- There’s a size limit on the free service (100x100px)
At Icons8 they have free and paid services. If you download an icon for free it will be a PNG file (which should be fine, YouTube supports PNG and it’s good for transparency) that is no larger than 100x100px. This is not ideal since YouTube recommends 800x800px for profile pictures, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. Profile pictures render down to much smaller than that.
You will also need to link to Icons8 if you use their icons for free (i.e. in the ‘about’ section of your channel page).
To get started on Icons8, type something into the search bar on the home page that you think might work as an icon or as part of whatever graphics you have planned. I typed in ‘game’ for this one, since gaming is the biggest genre on YouTube. Here are a few of the results that came up:
Lower down in the results there were different kinds of sports balls, hand-held gaming systems, playing cards, joy sticks, baseball caps and more.
After you find an icon you like, click on it and it will appear on the right side of your screen where you’ll be able to make a few changes (an editing screen will pop up once you start clicking on things). You can edit your colors, overlay small decals, add text, and add a border, change your background and adjust your size. Here’s the editing screen:
You can give your icon a pretty different look from its default. Check this out:
You cannot download your icon from the editing screen. You need to click Save, and then download it from the main display screen here:
You can change the size with that drop down menu, but you’ll be limited in your options if you don’t want to pay.
I downloaded my image and tried to see how it would look as an icon/profile picture. As you can see, it was pretty blurry in the preview:
However, the preview is larger than the actual profile picture. Once I set it, it looked alright.
Looking for somewhere you can build your own icon/logo from scratch? Check out this list of logo makers .
After downloading the icons or logos, it is time to add them to your YouTube video. Here I recommend our Wondershare Filmora video editor . Below is a video tutorial about how to add a logo to video in Filmora . Remember to download the free trial version to test.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
Whether you need YouTube icons and logos to use as pop-up graphics in your videos, to serve as your channel icon, to use as watermarks, or to liven up your channel art or video thumbnails – don’t worry. There are lots of places to get them.
We’ve made a list of 6 sites where you can download icons and logos for free for YouTub videos, and explained how they work.
You might also want to check out these YouTube channels offering free profile picture templates .
1. Flaticon.com
Key Points:
- Great selection of icons/logos
- It’s easy to change the colors before you download
I’m putting Flaticon.com right at the top of this list because it has something that really sets it apart from the other sites on this list – it lets you edit pre-made icons before you download them.
You start out on Flaticon by searching for a theme like beauty, gaming, flowers, or emojis. I searched for ‘birds’ and found these cuties.
These aren’t all the birds on Flaticon, just a few. They had a huge selection in all the different searches I tried.
I clicked on the brown bird to open up the download screen, and then clicked into ‘Edit icon’. There may be a pop up that tells you editing tools are only available to registered users, but it’s wrong. Just close it and keep going, unless you want to register.
You can edit the colors in your icon just by clicking on the color you want to replace, and then clicking on the color in the color selector you want to replace it with. I made my birdie FLY.
I never apologize for puns.
Once you like the look of your icon, just click Download. You will be prompted to choose a format. PNG is the most popular because it is supported the most places (including on YouTube), and because it allows for a transparent background.
After clicking on a format you will also be prompted to choose a size for your image. It’s always best to go with the largest image you can – its way easier to shrink things and keep them looking good than it is to have to enlarge them.
Flaticon has a great selection, it’s free, and they make it really easy to edit your creations. I would strongly recommend this site to anyone in the market for an icon or logo.
Flaticon asks that you include an “Icon made by [author link] from <www.flaticon.com> ” somewhere (i.e. video description, channel ‘about’ section) when you use their icons for free.
2. Freepik.com
Key Points:
- Good selection of icons.
- No way to customise them on the site.
- Attribution requried.
On freepik, you start off by searching for a theme (like the genre of your YouTube title or the topic of a video, i.e. ‘makeup’ or ‘music’). I searched for ‘cat’.
A few of the sets available on freepik. The crown icon means you need to be a paying Premium member, but most things are free.
You can’t edit on freepik, and in order to download for free you need to include an attribution/credit to freepik where you use the images.
You do not choose what format to download your images in on freepik. When you hit ‘Free Download’ it will automatically download a zip file which will contain both a .jpg and a .eps. The EPS is editable in any ‘vector graphics editor’, like Adobe Illustrator, and YouTube supports .jpg files.
3. Seeklogo.net
Key Points:
- Logos from major brands
- Great for channels that do product reviews
Seeklogo.net has a slightly more corporate slant than some of the other sites on this list. It has logos for a lot of major companies and brands available for download.
In the ‘search’ on Seeklogo.net, you can type in the name of a brand or industry and see if the well-known logo you’re looking for is available. This may be especially useful for people with sports related channels since they have a lot of logos for major teams.
I searched for YouTube – you never know when you might need the YouTube logo.
Although the site does not advertise PNG in the list of formats on their front page, downloads do include PNG versions (which is useful if you need transparency and don’t have a program which can edit vector files, like .eps).
4. IconArchive.com
Key Points:
- Site has an office/business slant.
- Detailed search tool lets you sort by color, theme, etc.
IconArchive has a huge selection of icons with somewhat of an office/business slant. I searched for ‘flower’ and half the results were of file-folders with flowers on them.
Could be cool for a lifestyle video about school or work?
My favorite thing about IconArchive is its search features. It allows you to filter results by color, size (down to the specific resolution), category, background color, style, and a lot more.
Color is under ‘Display’, meaning that it won’t filter out results that have different colors it’ll just list the color you select first.
The ‘Category’ filter is useful because there are some genres you probably recognize there, like ‘Lifestyle’. However, you should be careful not to over-filter. This site is pretty literal in how it categorizes. For example – there are no ‘flower’ images under ‘Lifestyle’.
Downloads are available in different sizes and formats including PNG. PNG is always a good option because it is supported by YouTube and includes transparent backgrounds.
Note that all of your different download buttons will be located underneath your image. They favor those ads that look like ‘download’ or ‘start now’ buttons, and the ads sit right next to the images on the right, so it’s easy to get confused and click on the ad.
5. Logaster.com
Key Points:
- You’ll have to pay for larger images.
- Focused more on businesses.
- Incorporates your channel name.
Logaster is really a service for businesses – they make and sell business cards, letterheads, and other office-y things like that. However, they are still a good choice for YouTubers because they have a free logo creator. Sort of.
You actually have to pay $9.99 to get larger images and remove the watermark, but the process is free.
When you arrive on Logaster there’s a button right on their home page that says ‘Create a logo for free’. Click on it.
In Step 1 it’ll ask for your company name and an activity type. You just need to put in your channel name and choose something from the activity drop down that you focus on in your videos.
My heart burns with the secret desire to be YouTube’s Neil Degrasse Tyson (it doesn’t really, but he is super cool) so I tried ‘Katie Does Science’ and ‘Science, Studies, Education’. Here’s what it came up with:
There are 10 pages of suggestions!
You can see how, unless you have a short channel name, you’re probably not going to be able to use any of these as an icon, but a lot of them would look cool on a banner. There’s an ‘Edit Logo Concept’ button which allows you to make changes to the layout, but you can still only choose from preset layouts. For example, some logo concepts allow you to choose whether the icon is above your text or next to it.
After you click ‘save’ in the last step you’ll be prompted to provide an email address and password. Once you sign in, you’ll be able to download a small logo for free, or purchase the higher resolution image.
I personally wouldn’t recommend buying an image from here unless your channel is for your small business and you need things like branded business cards and letterhead. This site might be better for gathering inspiration than actually downloading a logo from.
6. Icons8.com
Key Points:
- You need to link back to them to use their icons.
- You can edit the colors on the site and even add details.
- There’s a size limit on the free service (100x100px)
At Icons8 they have free and paid services. If you download an icon for free it will be a PNG file (which should be fine, YouTube supports PNG and it’s good for transparency) that is no larger than 100x100px. This is not ideal since YouTube recommends 800x800px for profile pictures, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. Profile pictures render down to much smaller than that.
You will also need to link to Icons8 if you use their icons for free (i.e. in the ‘about’ section of your channel page).
To get started on Icons8, type something into the search bar on the home page that you think might work as an icon or as part of whatever graphics you have planned. I typed in ‘game’ for this one, since gaming is the biggest genre on YouTube. Here are a few of the results that came up:
Lower down in the results there were different kinds of sports balls, hand-held gaming systems, playing cards, joy sticks, baseball caps and more.
After you find an icon you like, click on it and it will appear on the right side of your screen where you’ll be able to make a few changes (an editing screen will pop up once you start clicking on things). You can edit your colors, overlay small decals, add text, and add a border, change your background and adjust your size. Here’s the editing screen:
You can give your icon a pretty different look from its default. Check this out:
You cannot download your icon from the editing screen. You need to click Save, and then download it from the main display screen here:
You can change the size with that drop down menu, but you’ll be limited in your options if you don’t want to pay.
I downloaded my image and tried to see how it would look as an icon/profile picture. As you can see, it was pretty blurry in the preview:
However, the preview is larger than the actual profile picture. Once I set it, it looked alright.
Looking for somewhere you can build your own icon/logo from scratch? Check out this list of logo makers .
After downloading the icons or logos, it is time to add them to your YouTube video. Here I recommend our Wondershare Filmora video editor . Below is a video tutorial about how to add a logo to video in Filmora . Remember to download the free trial version to test.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett
Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions
Whether you need YouTube icons and logos to use as pop-up graphics in your videos, to serve as your channel icon, to use as watermarks, or to liven up your channel art or video thumbnails – don’t worry. There are lots of places to get them.
We’ve made a list of 6 sites where you can download icons and logos for free for YouTub videos, and explained how they work.
You might also want to check out these YouTube channels offering free profile picture templates .
1. Flaticon.com
Key Points:
- Great selection of icons/logos
- It’s easy to change the colors before you download
I’m putting Flaticon.com right at the top of this list because it has something that really sets it apart from the other sites on this list – it lets you edit pre-made icons before you download them.
You start out on Flaticon by searching for a theme like beauty, gaming, flowers, or emojis. I searched for ‘birds’ and found these cuties.
These aren’t all the birds on Flaticon, just a few. They had a huge selection in all the different searches I tried.
I clicked on the brown bird to open up the download screen, and then clicked into ‘Edit icon’. There may be a pop up that tells you editing tools are only available to registered users, but it’s wrong. Just close it and keep going, unless you want to register.
You can edit the colors in your icon just by clicking on the color you want to replace, and then clicking on the color in the color selector you want to replace it with. I made my birdie FLY.
I never apologize for puns.
Once you like the look of your icon, just click Download. You will be prompted to choose a format. PNG is the most popular because it is supported the most places (including on YouTube), and because it allows for a transparent background.
After clicking on a format you will also be prompted to choose a size for your image. It’s always best to go with the largest image you can – its way easier to shrink things and keep them looking good than it is to have to enlarge them.
Flaticon has a great selection, it’s free, and they make it really easy to edit your creations. I would strongly recommend this site to anyone in the market for an icon or logo.
Flaticon asks that you include an “Icon made by [author link] from <www.flaticon.com> ” somewhere (i.e. video description, channel ‘about’ section) when you use their icons for free.
2. Freepik.com
Key Points:
- Good selection of icons.
- No way to customise them on the site.
- Attribution requried.
On freepik, you start off by searching for a theme (like the genre of your YouTube title or the topic of a video, i.e. ‘makeup’ or ‘music’). I searched for ‘cat’.
A few of the sets available on freepik. The crown icon means you need to be a paying Premium member, but most things are free.
You can’t edit on freepik, and in order to download for free you need to include an attribution/credit to freepik where you use the images.
You do not choose what format to download your images in on freepik. When you hit ‘Free Download’ it will automatically download a zip file which will contain both a .jpg and a .eps. The EPS is editable in any ‘vector graphics editor’, like Adobe Illustrator, and YouTube supports .jpg files.
3. Seeklogo.net
Key Points:
- Logos from major brands
- Great for channels that do product reviews
Seeklogo.net has a slightly more corporate slant than some of the other sites on this list. It has logos for a lot of major companies and brands available for download.
In the ‘search’ on Seeklogo.net, you can type in the name of a brand or industry and see if the well-known logo you’re looking for is available. This may be especially useful for people with sports related channels since they have a lot of logos for major teams.
I searched for YouTube – you never know when you might need the YouTube logo.
Although the site does not advertise PNG in the list of formats on their front page, downloads do include PNG versions (which is useful if you need transparency and don’t have a program which can edit vector files, like .eps).
4. IconArchive.com
Key Points:
- Site has an office/business slant.
- Detailed search tool lets you sort by color, theme, etc.
IconArchive has a huge selection of icons with somewhat of an office/business slant. I searched for ‘flower’ and half the results were of file-folders with flowers on them.
Could be cool for a lifestyle video about school or work?
My favorite thing about IconArchive is its search features. It allows you to filter results by color, size (down to the specific resolution), category, background color, style, and a lot more.
Color is under ‘Display’, meaning that it won’t filter out results that have different colors it’ll just list the color you select first.
The ‘Category’ filter is useful because there are some genres you probably recognize there, like ‘Lifestyle’. However, you should be careful not to over-filter. This site is pretty literal in how it categorizes. For example – there are no ‘flower’ images under ‘Lifestyle’.
Downloads are available in different sizes and formats including PNG. PNG is always a good option because it is supported by YouTube and includes transparent backgrounds.
Note that all of your different download buttons will be located underneath your image. They favor those ads that look like ‘download’ or ‘start now’ buttons, and the ads sit right next to the images on the right, so it’s easy to get confused and click on the ad.
5. Logaster.com
Key Points:
- You’ll have to pay for larger images.
- Focused more on businesses.
- Incorporates your channel name.
Logaster is really a service for businesses – they make and sell business cards, letterheads, and other office-y things like that. However, they are still a good choice for YouTubers because they have a free logo creator. Sort of.
You actually have to pay $9.99 to get larger images and remove the watermark, but the process is free.
When you arrive on Logaster there’s a button right on their home page that says ‘Create a logo for free’. Click on it.
In Step 1 it’ll ask for your company name and an activity type. You just need to put in your channel name and choose something from the activity drop down that you focus on in your videos.
My heart burns with the secret desire to be YouTube’s Neil Degrasse Tyson (it doesn’t really, but he is super cool) so I tried ‘Katie Does Science’ and ‘Science, Studies, Education’. Here’s what it came up with:
There are 10 pages of suggestions!
You can see how, unless you have a short channel name, you’re probably not going to be able to use any of these as an icon, but a lot of them would look cool on a banner. There’s an ‘Edit Logo Concept’ button which allows you to make changes to the layout, but you can still only choose from preset layouts. For example, some logo concepts allow you to choose whether the icon is above your text or next to it.
After you click ‘save’ in the last step you’ll be prompted to provide an email address and password. Once you sign in, you’ll be able to download a small logo for free, or purchase the higher resolution image.
I personally wouldn’t recommend buying an image from here unless your channel is for your small business and you need things like branded business cards and letterhead. This site might be better for gathering inspiration than actually downloading a logo from.
6. Icons8.com
Key Points:
- You need to link back to them to use their icons.
- You can edit the colors on the site and even add details.
- There’s a size limit on the free service (100x100px)
At Icons8 they have free and paid services. If you download an icon for free it will be a PNG file (which should be fine, YouTube supports PNG and it’s good for transparency) that is no larger than 100x100px. This is not ideal since YouTube recommends 800x800px for profile pictures, but it’s not necessarily a deal breaker either. Profile pictures render down to much smaller than that.
You will also need to link to Icons8 if you use their icons for free (i.e. in the ‘about’ section of your channel page).
To get started on Icons8, type something into the search bar on the home page that you think might work as an icon or as part of whatever graphics you have planned. I typed in ‘game’ for this one, since gaming is the biggest genre on YouTube. Here are a few of the results that came up:
Lower down in the results there were different kinds of sports balls, hand-held gaming systems, playing cards, joy sticks, baseball caps and more.
After you find an icon you like, click on it and it will appear on the right side of your screen where you’ll be able to make a few changes (an editing screen will pop up once you start clicking on things). You can edit your colors, overlay small decals, add text, and add a border, change your background and adjust your size. Here’s the editing screen:
You can give your icon a pretty different look from its default. Check this out:
You cannot download your icon from the editing screen. You need to click Save, and then download it from the main display screen here:
You can change the size with that drop down menu, but you’ll be limited in your options if you don’t want to pay.
I downloaded my image and tried to see how it would look as an icon/profile picture. As you can see, it was pretty blurry in the preview:
However, the preview is larger than the actual profile picture. Once I set it, it looked alright.
Looking for somewhere you can build your own icon/logo from scratch? Check out this list of logo makers .
After downloading the icons or logos, it is time to add them to your YouTube video. Here I recommend our Wondershare Filmora video editor . Below is a video tutorial about how to add a logo to video in Filmora . Remember to download the free trial version to test.
Richard Bennett
Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.
Follow @Richard Bennett
- Title: "2024 Approved Step-by-Step for Quick Chromakey Application"
- Author: Thomas
- Created at : 2024-05-31 12:45:10
- Updated at : 2024-06-01 12:45:10
- Link: https://youtube-help.techidaily.com/2024-approved-step-by-step-for-quick-chromakey-application/
- License: This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
