Forum Discussion
Blurring text for privacy
I'm building courses for the staff at a college and it is sometimes necessary to display personal information on students in screenshots. Is there a way to blur this information to keep it private? I can do it in my photo editing software before importing the picture but was wondering if there is a way to do it after bringing the picture into Storyline 360.
66 Replies
I, too, would like to upvote this request to be able to blur out text within Storyline while building sims.
I'll add my upvote for the feature request. I believe adding a blur feature would be a fantastic and very useful addition to Storyline. I work with a lot of systems for which a scrubbed training environment does not exist. Consequently, I spend a lot of time blurring data on simulation screens. Depending on how the sim is built, I either scrub static screens in Photoshop or use Camtasia to blur video. It would be great to have the feature in Storyline.
This is really a needed feature for my organization and something my whole team encounters regularly. I still have not found a good solution for blurring in my company that works daily with medical PHI.
Hello Hannah, and welcome to E-Learning Heroes. 😊
We do not have an update on this feature, but it is one that we are continuing to track. This conversation is linked so that we can provide any updates with you here in the future.
I wanted to share some information about how we manage these feature requests, which may be helpful.
Hi, I see this thread was opened 4 years ago - is there any news on a blur tool being added?
For software simulations, due to PHI/PII in medical data, I've had the best success with mocking up entire screens using Illustrator and then importing the images for the background. It's time consuming but the advantage is that I can then create customize interactions and feedback that more closely mimics the software.
This is needlessly time consuming.
I agree, and, quite frankly, find it extremely disturbing that there would be developers working on a live production system, accessing actual patients' (or other users') sensitive data, and expecting a blur tool to completely obfuscate said PII data.
If we upload anything to the LMS that has PHI/PII then an HR action will be taken. It hasn't happened to anyone on our team yet. It's an added incentive to making sure that our material is secure.
Wow, can't believe there's not a blur tool built into the tool. Ridiculous.
We are working a lot with program simulations using screen recording tool, it would be very helpful if it can mask/blur data for privacy. I will add this to feature request.
Update: I found this tutorial that will work for me for the slides that don't include scrolling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_4XKcfjJKc&feature=emb_title
However, for the slides that do include scrolling, I still need a solution.
Tommy, I saw that solution, and it seems to help a lot of people! However, my company is very particular about the software we can use. Articulate and TechSmith are approved, so if there's a solution within them, I would definitely like to explore that. Otherwise, a new software request will take months (and quite a few irrate emails).
I just want to be sure this is clearly noticed on the thread. It is the fix for so many things.
Just wanted to add my thanks to Mind Garden and Madison Jurgens for a really great tip!
What's even better is that having done a screen recording with Storyline you still have the original to create or recreate new non-blurred versions if you change your mind.
THIS IS AMAZING! Everyone should check this out. Makes blurring or many, many other edits possible with a few clicks. Excellent and seamless integration with programs like GIMP and SnagIt! Thank you soooooo much for sharing this link.
Madison, TechSmith SnagIt does have an excellent blur tool. While it won't work for a video, for a screen recording converted to view, try, or test mode, each slide's screenshot could be copied into SnagIt, the PII blurred out, and then copied back to the slide. It would be a lot of tedious work for a large project, but it would definitely work.
Not a total solution, but when I was doing software recording/simulations where there was the possibility of PII being displayed, I would be working in the QA environment (never Production) and using one of the test "dummy" profiles, never an actual employee or patient. Then I didn't have to worry about trying to "fix it in post."
Hi Steve, there isn’t a neat way of doing what you are after in Storyline so I’d stick with your current technique for now.
I’m in a similar situation to Joe as I build software simulations of clinical systems for a hospital.
On the rare occasion where a test system isn’t available or dummying data for several test patients isn’t feasible, I resort to using the (fantastic) video blurring facilities of Davinci Resolve (the feature-packed tool is initially very intimidating and even after a couple of year’s use, I find it helps to focus on just what I need to do). Alternatively and if I’m happy to use something less refined, I use Microsoft ClipChamp.
There are several YouTube tutorials on using the above tools for blurring. Hopefully, one day the Articulate developers will take note of the need for more dedicated blurring facilities in their tools.
I don't have the option to insert a bunch of synthetic data into our live Student information systems.
I'd say remember that for the eventual deposition. Your corporate counsel will need to know that before they settle out of court.
Hi,
I use DaVinci Resolve 16 for this. They have a free version and you can create professional-looking blur-effects.
Search YouTube for tutorial.Im still waiting for Articulate to implement proper blur-effect functionality.
BR,
Tommy
