Highlight areas of a screen

Hi Sean

Attached is a method I might use for this.

• Place the image on the slide as the slide background
• Add a semi-transparent rectangle that covers the whole slide
• Add shapes over the areas that you want to highlight
• Format these shapes using a Slide Background Fill
• Adjust the timing of these shapes on the timeline
• Animate shapes if required

Hope that give you another idea that you may find simpler to build or maintain.

H

Hi Helen,

Thanks for the reply I will give it a try, it looks easier than my method.

Thanks,

Sean.

Hi Helen,

I have just done this in my training and the end result looks much better then my way. It looks much more professional when the slide is played.

Would not have got it looking that good without your help... so thank you very much for your help.

Sean. 

Hi Sean! Glad that Helen was able to assist you here and thanks for popping back in with an update

Thanks Helen!

Hi Helen

Id like to do this same highlighting on a samller image, which wouldn't work as a background. Is there anyway you can do that on Storyline?

thanks Wendy 

Hi Wendy and welcome to Heroes! 

I'm not sure that Helen is still subscribed to this thread, but I found a similar question in this thread and another suggestion in this thread.

Hope that helps with what you're trying to accomplish, and if you need anything else please let us know. 

Hello Helen,

Thank you for sharing your knowledge... I am also trying to highlight certain areas of a picture but they do not have a square shape.

Do you have any tips to give me as how I can highlight the blue and orange shapes for exemple in the attachment?

Many thanks Nathalie

Hi Nathalie and welcome to E-Learning Heroes :)

This thread is a bit dated and I'm not sure that Helen is still subscribed here.

Is that an image that you're including in your file, or did you build that within Storyline?

If you built it outside of Storyline, you may want to consider removing the color of the unneeded items to 'highlight' the parts to focus on and save as a different image, which you could then use for states within your Storyline project file.

Hopefully others in the community will be able to chime in with their ideas for your design :)

Hello

I have just read this thread with interest. I have been using the method descrided for some time - creating a slide layout in the slidemaster, adding my image and then in the main part of the program create a new slide, append the new background to it, add a transparent box which is black and then create a new shape which has slide background as the fill. Perfect works brilliantly until today.

Normally I would only use one slide in this format, however my current project requires several slides of this type with different images hightlighted. My problem is this:  with the second master slide created, new image in it - new slide created append the new (and differently named masterslide) when I move my shape which is formatted to show slide background it displays the background image from the other slide which has this function.

I have spent hours redoing this, building again from scratch, the masterslides have different names and different images. And the one that is displaying wrong doesnt have the other image below it!

I would be so happy if someone could shed some light on this issue for me!

Ha

Just done it this way rather than go into master and it worked?????!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be2T95BMVjc&feature=youtu.be

You might want to consider PowerPoint labs, developed by the National University of Singapore, and free.   http://www.comp.nus.edu.sg/~pptlabs/

Any image you can get on a PP slide, you can draw a shape around it and click to highlight.

I use MS Snip (also free) to take a screen shot of the slide.  Highlight any strange shape and have it highlighted in under two minutes. Longer, if you need to adjust the transparency of the mask.

See the attached video.

Hi Natalie, sorry for the late reply, I didn't get a notification for this as the original post was a few years ago.  You can use the same technique but the shapes you add over the slide need to be freeform shapes - you can draw any shapes you need with these - I've highlighted the option in the is image for you.

Helen

Hi, This was a great way to do one slide. How about for a whole screencasting session? Are there any tips on how to insert a box highlighting a specific focus area whilst leaving the rest of the slide with an opacity of 60%, and this without having to resort to creating a slide background using an image?

Thanks!

If a rectangular shape will work for you, you can use a snipping tool to take a shot of the portion you want of the original, cover the original with the translucent shape, and inset the snip on top of that.

Thank you for the suggestion. This is clever, however, in a screencasting
session there are moving pieces such as the mouse. Using the snipping tool
could be good for static demonstrations, but for a software simulation this
would not work.

Any other suggestions?

Thank you kindly.

I just tried the original suggestion and it works (almost) perfectly for me. When I preview my slide the background image is really grainy. I'm guessing it has something to do with the resolution of the image, but not quite sure how to tackle that.

Any suggestions are welcome :)

Hi Rachel,

What are the dimensions of the original background image and your Slide Size? If you had to scale that image up or down to fit the slide, that could cause a loss in overall quality.

Hi, 

We are currently testing SL to make the switch from Captivate. But we do need some functionality that is not available in SL. 

This method seems like it may do the trick for us, and works great when previewing from the timeline. But when viewing the entire project/publishing to video the background fill does not highlight the correct areas. 

Is there a setting I need to configure in the publishing stage? 

Thanks for your help! :)

Hello Micaela and welcome to E-Learning Heroes :)

Thanks for reaching out and letting us know what you are running into as well.

The first thing that comes to mind is that your project may be re-sizing once published, so be sure to lock the player at the size you have defined.

Hello everyone. Is there any update on this feature? I'm hoping that Storyline has an easy highlight box similar to Captivate.

Hi Andre!

Thanks for checking in! This isn't a current feature in Storyline 360 but there are many workarounds listed to design this in Storyline 360.

If this is a feature you'd like to see in Storyline 360, please share using our Feature Request form!