How to Generate Custom Images for Your Videos and Thumbnails

You're building a thumbnail and you need a specific image: a particular object on a clean background, a stylized scene that matches your topic, a graphic element that doesn't exist in any stock library. The usual options are all bad — settle for a generic stock photo that looks like everyone else's, spend an hour in a separate AI image tool bouncing between tabs, or commission something you don't have time to wait for.

Generating exactly the image you need, in the same place you're already working, removes that friction entirely.

Why generic images hold your thumbnails back

Thumbnails live or die on standing out, and stock imagery works against that — viewers have seen the same photos a thousand times, so they scroll right past. Custom-generated images give you something nobody else has: an element built specifically for your video, in the style and composition you want. The same goes for overlays and B-roll graphics, where a bespoke image reads as produced and a stock one reads as filler.

How AI Photos works

The AI Photos tool is a text-to-image generator built into the SmoothyEdit dashboard. You describe what you want and generate it without leaving your workflow:

• Multiple models. Choose between leading image models — different ones excel at different styles, from photorealistic to illustrated to graphic.
• Aspect ratios for where it's going. Generate at the right shape for a thumbnail, a vertical overlay, or a square post.
• Multiple generations. Produce several options at once and pick the strongest.

And the parts that usually mean exporting to yet another tool are built in:

• Background removal — drop the subject straight onto your thumbnail with no matte to clean up.
• Upscaling — push a generation to a higher resolution so it holds up at full thumbnail size.

Where it fits in the workflow

Because AI Photos lives next to the rest of the toolkit, the image you generate flows directly into what you're making — a thumbnail concept from the Thumbnail Ideas tool, an overlay for an edit, or a graphic for a social post. You're not exporting from one app and importing into another; the generation, the background removal, and the upscale all happen in one place.

A note on taste

AI image generation gets you the raw material fast, but the editing eye still matters. The best results come from treating a generation as a starting point — pick the strongest of several, clean it up, and compose it into your thumbnail deliberately. The tool removes the bottleneck of getting an image; you still bring the judgment about which one works.

Getting started

AI Photos is a Pro tool in SmoothyEdit, available from the dashboard's view switcher. Open the SmoothyEdit dashboard, switch to AI Photos, and describe the image you need. See the SmoothyEdit overview for the rest of what you can make from a single video.