5 Best YouTube Banner Makers in 2022 [Windows, Mac]

The banner image you feature on your YouTube channel should visually communicate to each visitor—in an instant—the heart of your brand and the subject of your channel. The right banner can even help you convert those visitors into loyal subscribers.

In this post, we'll tell you how to find the perfect YouTube banner maker that will make it easy to create a unique and eye-catching header image for your channel.

We reviewed the top five YouTube banner makers and photo editors, covering key features, pros and cons, specs, and overall ratings. From resizing, cropping, effects, templates, text overlays, and more, our five picks will help you create the ideal YouTube channel art.

Then, keep reading for a quick comparison chart, step-by-step instructions on creating a YouTube banner, and answers to frequently asked questions.

• Top 3 YouTube Banner Makers Snapshots
• What Is a YouTube Banner?
• 5 Best YouTube Banner Makers
1. PhotoDirector – Best Overall
2. PicMonkey – Best Online Tool
3. Fotor – Best for Adding Emojis
4. Pixlr – Best for Different Skill Levels
5. Canva – Best for Teams
• Best YouTube Banner Makers Comparison Chart
• How to Make a YouTube Banner
• Download the Best YouTube Banner Maker for Free
• YouTube Banner Maker FAQ

Top 3 YouTube Banner Makers Snapshots

1. PhotoDirector – Best Overall

PhotoDirector is a professional photo editor and YouTube banner maker with a massive selection of tools, effects, templates, and design packs to help you create the perfect banner art for your channel. Detailed Review >

2. PicMonkey – Best Online Tool

PicMonkey is a versatile online photo editor that makes it simple to customize your YouTube banner with art templates, DIY pre-sized canvases, overlays, and more. Detailed Review >

3. Fotor – Best for Adding Emojis

Fotor is another online YouTube banner creator. It offers free and pre-set banner templates and millions of emojis and stickers. Detailed Review >

What Is a YouTube Banner?

A YouTube banner is very similar to a Facebook cover photo. When you view a YouTube channel, you'll see a rectangular image right across the top of the page, known as a banner, channel art, or channel header image. You can use this banner to customize your YouTube channel and make it stand out from the crowd.

Your YouTube banner should be a cohesive and appealing image that communicates vital information about your brand and channel. It could include your social media info, video upload schedule, tagline, logos, a self-portrait, or anything else you want.

We recommend using a banner that instantly conveys the subject of your channel and what makes it unique.

5 Best YouTube Banner Makers

1. PhotoDirector — Best Overall

Compatibility: Windows, Mac

Overall Rating: 10 / 10

Banner Tools Rating: 10 / 10

Key Features

1. Extensive selection of design templates, content packs, frames, and more
2. AI-powered banner editing tools and effects
3. Royalty-free stock photo library with millions of images

Our best overall pick for a YouTube banner maker is PhotoDirector, a professional photo editor from CyberLink. It features pre-set banner templates and background images, thousands of unique effects, stickers and overlays, graphic design elements, and an intuitive user interface. PhotoDirector is perfect for making fast, simple banners, yet it still offers advanced tools for deeper editing and creating your YouTube channel. In addition, PhotoDirector lets you design YouTube banner templates and save them to use later. That feature makes it quick and easy to create cohesive branding whenever you need something fresh for your channel.

In addition to PhotoDirector's capabilities as a customizable YouTube banner maker, the software has every editing tool and feature you could ever want or need. You can create and share your artistic visions using a combination of AI-powered tools, design packs, advanced layer editing, retouching, color correction, and much more. If you need a little inspiration, check out the four million-plus images in the royalty-free stock library containing Shutterstock and Getty Images.

If you want a professionally designed YouTube banner (or one that at least looks like it was!), then PhotoDirector is the software you need. Its vast range of advanced design tools and templates is perfect for creating stunning YouTube channel art and thumbnails.

Once you finish your banner on PhotoDirector, you may want to download CyberLink’s award-winning video editor PowerDirector. It has thousands of templates, effects, transitions, and tools for editing and producing YouTube videos. It's the perfect companion editor for PhotoDirector, giving you a comprehensive solution for all your YouTube and content creation needs.

Reasons to Recommend

1. Intuitive and user-friendly interface
2. Advanced corrective algorithms allow for precise editing
3. Huge range of design packs and banner templates
4. Gigantic learning library and blog with step-by-step tutorials

Click the button below to download PhotoDirector right now and create your YouTube banner for free.

2. PicMonkey – Best Online Tool

Image from Shutterstock Blog.

Compatibility: Windows, Mac

Overall Rating: 8 / 10

Banner Tools Rating: 8 / 10

Key Features

1. Easy online tool for creating YouTube banners
2. Offers design packs, templates, and brand kit tools

PicMonkey is a free YouTube banner maker from Shutterstock that offers fast and easy editing. The software lets you remove backgrounds, add effects, shift color tones, or create banners utilizing various styles and graphics. We can't deny the ease and simplicity of using PicMonkey in your browser.

Not only does PicMonkey offer banner-making tools, but you can also use this popular photo editor to create YouTube thumbnails, profile pics, and other images for your channel. When creating content, you will have your choice of design themes, photo effects, templates, graphics, stock photos, and fonts. Plus, you can also use PicMonkey for standard photo and media editing.

PicMonkey is great for an online YouTube banner maker and design tool. However, it's not perfect. For example, it lacks the full range of template packs that other similar software offers for making channel art. In addition, you'll need to pay for a subscription if you want to use all the premium features that PicMonkey offers.

If you're a beginner, PicMonkey is a great choice. However, experienced editors may wish to choose another software with more advanced tools.

3. Fotor – Best for Adding Emojis

Image from Fotor.

Compatibility: Windows, Mac

Overall Rating: 8 / 10

Banner Tools Rating: 7 / 10

Key Features

1. Millions of unique emojis and stickers to choose from
2. Additional tools for photo editing and content creation
3. Decent selection of ready-to-use YouTube banner templates

Fotor is another YouTube banner maker you can use with Windows and Mac via a web browser. You can pick any ready-to-use and free design template to create fast banners already pre-set to YouTube's size requirements. Plus, Fotor has millions of different stickers and emojis you can use to make creative, fun, and eye-catching banner art that will snag you more views.

Fotor also lets you create and edit other content, like images for Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc. You can apply unique and fun effects, remove backgrounds, touch up your portraits, crop and resize images, and enhance your photos while you have some fun at the same time. It's easy to use: upload your image, select a feature or effect, then download and share.

Many beginners love Fotor because it features simple and ready-to-use YouTube banner templates. Unfortunately, Fotor is also full of annoying third-party advertisements. It also doesn't offer the same detailed, advanced editing tools and effects as some of the other YouTube banner makers in our review. However, it is a great choice for fast creations and adding emojis and stickers to your banners.

4. Pixlr – Best for Different Skill Levels

Image from Pixlr.

Compatibility: Windows, Mac

Overall Rating: 7 / 10

Banner Tools Rating: 7 / 10

Key Features

1. Free, easily customizable YouTube banner art templates
2. Great for content creators of varying skill levels
3. Decent selection of overlays, effects, and other design elements

Pixlr is another popular software that offers templates, art designs, graphic overlays, and more to help you create the perfect YouTube banner. It's a good choice for people of different skill levels since it has tools ranging from the basic to the advanced, including user-friendly drag-and-drop editing. In addition, you can use texts, effects, filters, artistic overlays, and other graphic design elements to create your banner.

After making your channel art, you can use Pixlr to create additional content for your YouTube channel and other platforms. For example, Pixlr has ready-to-use YouTube thumbnail templates in various themes and styles, from health and fitness, beauty, sports, and more. Pixlr also offers the standard range of editing and design tools, whether you start with a blank white canvas, video, or photo.

Pixlr is perfect for creating YouTube banners and thumbnails. However, it has some disadvantages. For example, Pixlr's many third-party advertisements are in the right-hand side editing toolbar, making it unnecessarily difficult to work on projects. In addition, Pixlr doesn't offer a cloud-based storage option, so you can't access your work from a different device. Also, performance can be slow and buggy, especially during complex editing.

5. Canva – Best for Teams

Image from Canva.

Compatibility: Windows, Mac

Overall Rating: 7 / 10

Banner Tools Rating: 6 / 10

Key Features

1. Ability to collaborate with teams to design YouTube banners in real-time
2. Thousands of YouTube banner templates and designs to choose from
3. Additional editing tools for photos and videos

Canva is a photo editing software that doubles as a YouTube banner maker, and it's easy to see why it's popular. Start by choosing from thousands of pre-sized YouTube banner templates and stock images, or upload your saved logos or brand graphics. Canva's best feature is Teams, which lets you design YouTube banner art or any other photo or video editing and collaborate in real-time with others.

Canva is great for people who want to create stunning YouTube banners and thumbnails, but it offers more. It's also a professional photo and video editor with a free trial and premium version. The premium version has advanced tools to make unique content for your YouTube channel. It also offers numerous marketing and content creation templates.

Canva is a useful content creator and photo editor. It's perfect for creating a YouTube banner remotely with friends or a partner in real-time using Teams. However, two people can't work on the same project simultaneously. Plus, Canva doesn't allow free-hand design or illustration. Instead, you'll have to pick from pre-set design elements, limiting your creative process.

Best YouTube Banner Makers Comparison Chart

How to Make a YouTube Banner

Now, follow along as we show you step-by-step how to make your own stunning YouTube banner art using PhotoDirector:

1. First, download PhotoDirector, install the software, and open it on your computer.
2. Click on Import, then select Photos from the drop-down menu. Find the background image you want to use for your YouTube banner.
3. Click on Crop and Straighten under the Adjustments tab, then change the aspect ratio to 16:9.

4. Click on the Guided tab. Explore the left-hand menu to add different effects, templates, stickers, overlays, etc.

5. When you finish your banner, click on Save/Share. Select Save as New Photo File to open the final editing box.

6. Check under Image Sizing to ensure that your banner has a width and height of 2048 x 1152 pixels. Click Export. Follow the steps below in the FAQ to upload your new banner to YouTube.

Download the Best YouTube Banner Maker for Free

Creating a successful YouTube channel is no easy task. In particular, creating the perfect YouTube banner is a vital task. Fortunately, we found five of the best YouTube banner makers you can use to create channel art, from the fast and simple to the detailed and complex.

Our pick for the best YouTube banner maker is PhotoDirector. With a vast selection of pre-set templates, stickers, overlays, effects, and advanced, AI-powered editing features for one-click fixes, PhotoDirector will help you create a stunning YouTube banner that perfectly portrays your channel's brand.

Download PhotoDirector now and try out this incredible photo editor for yourself. You won't be disappointed!