Drive Viewers’ Attention With Spotlight Effect in ActivePresenter 7

ActivePresenter has been known as the best screencast software for years. The new version, ActivePresenter 7 has been updated with lots of enhancements, geared toward elearning design. However, creating a video, add Spotlight effect to drive your viewers’ attention is still an important feature that most video creators need.

Learn how to use Spotlight effect in ActivePresenter 7 from this tutorial. It is really simple to follow. If you are new to ActivePresenter, take a quick look at our detail review about this program here!

How To Add Spotlight Effect in ActivePresenter 7

Spotlight is a useful annotation object in ActivePresenter. It helps you easily direct your audience’s attention to a specific part of a slide. In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a spotlight effect in ActivePresenter 7.

Inserting a Spotlight

To create a spotlight effect, go to the Annotations tab > Spotlight.

A spotlight object is immediately inserted in a slide. It retains the original brightness within the spotlight shape while darkening the rest of the screen.

Adjusting the Spotlight Effect

Resizing and Repositioning

Spotlight objects have their default size and position. So, you need to resize and reposition them to the size and position you want.

• Drag the resizing handles (green dots) to change the size.
• Hover over the object until the pointer turns into a four-way arrow, then click and drag it to the position you want.

Changing the Spotlight Shape

By default, a spotlight shape is a rectangle, but you can change the shape to any type of shapes ActivePresenter provides.

To do that, select the spotlight object, then go to the Format tab > Change Shape and choose a new shape from the list.

Adjusting the Transparency Level

Regarding spotlight objects, the Style & Effects tab in the Properties pane shows the properties of the area that lies OUTSIDE the shape (not inside it). That area is made semi-transparent, so you can go to the Fill section and drag the Opacity slider to adjust the transparency level of that area.

Note: Another way to draw audience’s attention to an area is use Highlight objects. Highlight is a transparent, colored rectangle shape that can be placed over a certain area on a slide to highlight that area. Insert this object to a slide by going to Annotations > Highlight.

Creating a Spotlight Effect of Your Own

Do you want a spotlight effect that casts a focused beam of light like a flashlight? Something like this:

ActivePresenter allows you to create this effect by using shapes and gradient background fill. Let’s see how to make the effect from scratch.

Step 1: Create the light source. Do the following:

1. Draw an oval (Annotations > Shapes > Oval).
2. Change the Solid Fill color to Yellow (Properties > Style & Effects > Fill).
3. Switch from No Line to Solid Line (Properties > Style & Effects > Line). Change the light color and width if you want.

Step 2: Create the light beam. Perform the following:

1. Draw a trapezium for the light beam using the Freeform Shape drawing tool. Then, place the light beam under the light source.

1. Switch from Solid Line to No Line.
2. Create a gradient fill for the light beam. In the Fill section, select Gradient Fill. You’ll use Linear gradient type with a 90-degree angle (to make the fill direction straight). After that, add three Gradient Stops:

• Stop 1: Position 0%. Yellow. Opacity 255 (non-transparent).
• Stop 2: Position 50%. Yellow. Opacity 100 (semi-transparent).
• Stop 3: Position 100%. White. Opacity 0 (fully-transparent).

Now you can spotlight the object by placing it right under the light source, or make interesting effects like this:

That’s all about spotlight effects in ActivePresenter. Hope that this helps. Don’t forget to subscribe to our website so that you’ll be alerted with all future tutorials.

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A part of this post was published on Atomi’s blog. Read it here!