Why saving a face is the first thing to do
An avatar is a face Thumblore keeps and reuses. Save one, and every thumbnail you generate afterwards can put that specific person in the frame — same features, same identity, across dozens of videos.
Without a saved avatar, each generation invents a face. The results can be good individually and are useless as a channel: a row of your videos looks like a row of strangers. Almost every complaint about AI thumbnails ("it does not look like me", "it changes every time") is this one missing step.
Uploading a photo
- Open Avatars in the sidebar and click Upload avatar.
- Drop in up to three photos of the same person. One good photo is enough; three from slightly different angles gives the model more to work with.
- Give the avatar a short name — up to 20 characters. This is the label you will pick from on the dashboard, so name it for the role: "Main", "Podcast guest", "Gaming alt".
- Save. The avatar appears in your Avatars grid and in the dashboard picker immediately.
Each photo can be up to 10 MB. Images are downscaled and re-encoded before upload, which strips embedded metadata and keeps the request small.
What makes a good source photo
| Use | Avoid |
|---|---|
| Face fills a good part of the frame | Full-body shots where the face is 40 pixels wide |
| Even, front-facing light | Harsh backlight, half the face in shadow |
| Eyes visible and open | Sunglasses, hair across the eyes, hats with deep brims |
| Neutral or mild expression | Extreme expressions — they bake into the identity |
| Plain-ish background | Busy scenes with several other people in shot |
| Sharp focus | Motion blur, heavy compression, screenshots of screenshots |
Heavy filters are the usual culprit
A photo that has been through a beauty filter has already had its features altered. The model learns the filtered face, and then every thumbnail looks subtly not-you. Use the least-processed photo you have.
How many you can save
The cap is per plan: 1 on Free, 10 on Starter, unlimited on Pro and Studio. The Avatars screen shows your usage ("3 / 10 avatars used"). Hitting the cap does not delete anything — you simply cannot add another until you remove one or upgrade. Full detail in plans and limits.
Using a saved avatar
- On the dashboard — the Avatar field. Pick one, or several for a collab or versus thumbnail.
- In the editor — the Avatar tab lets you swap the face in an existing thumbnail for any saved avatar (Pro and up).
- Saved characters dialog — a quick grid of every face you have, reachable from the Avatars screen, for reviewing and deleting.
A naming convention that scales
Once you are past three or four faces, names matter. A convention that holds up when you are running more than one channel:
Main— your primary face, the one on most videos.Main-Alt— same person, different look (glasses, beard, different era of your channel).Guest-Sam— recurring collaborators, prefixed so they group together.Brand2-Host— faces belonging to a second channel, prefixed with the brand.
Names are capped at 20 characters, so keep the prefix short.
Deleting and replacing
Delete a face from the Avatars grid or the Saved characters dialog. Deleting does not change thumbnails you already made with it — those are finished images, not live links. To refresh a face that has changed (new haircut, new glasses), save a new avatar from current photos rather than editing the old one; keeping both lets you keep older series visually consistent.