Stopping power: winning the click

Legible is the minimum. A thumbnail also has to stop the scroll. Apply all of these unless the idea rules one out.

Colour

Pick one dominant hue that owns most of the frame and pair it with its opposite as the accent: orange and teal, purple and yellow, red and cyan, magenta and lime. Push saturation. Desaturated or muddy palettes are invisible in a feed and are the most common reason a thumbnail gets scrolled past.

Contrast

Make the subject the brightest or the darkest thing in frame, never the same value as its surroundings. Give it one clean rim or edge light so its outline separates from the background. Keep the background darker, simpler and less saturated, so the eye is pulled forward.

Angle

Never shoot flat, straight on, at eye level: it is the most forgettable framing there is. Pick one:

• low angle looking up: the subject feels powerful;
• high angle looking down: the subject feels in danger;
• a tilted camera: instability and energy;
• over the shoulder: the viewer is inside the danger.

Crop

Get close. A subject filling the tile beats a small figure in a wide landscape every time. Letting the subject or a foreground element run off the edge of the frame makes the whole image feel bigger.

Moment

Capture the instant before or during the peak action, never after it: mid-swing, mid-fall, mid-explosion. Something must be about to happen, so the viewer clicks to find out how it ends.

Face

The main character's expression carries the click. Make it big, exaggerated and readable, aimed at the viewer or at the threat.

The click killers

A symmetrical static row of characters. A muted or grey palette. A dark muddy scene. A tiny subject lost in scenery. A background as busy as the subject.

Keep the effects plain

Heavy bloom, god rays, thick haze, depth-of-field blur and floating particles everywhere are what make a render read as AI-generated. Bold colour and a strong angle sell the click; haze doesn't. Use one lighting idea per image and commit to it.