If you want a free tool that makes borders and lettering pop, try Canva, it has easy-to-use border templates and text effects, and you can customize colors to make your thumbnail stand out. Another solid option is GIMP, where you can add a stroke to your text layer and draw a border using the “Select > Border” feature (just pick a few pixels and fill with a contrasting color). For something even faster, you could check out Thumbflow, it’s an AI thumbnail generator with YouTube-optimized templates that automatically applies borders, highlights text, and exports at 1280×720 in seconds.