A versatile, wonderful way to bring focus to your subjects and apply finishing touches such background blur.
Setup
Move Shape onto an area you want to focus on and adjust its settings. Then, tweak the Spotlight and Background groups to add beauty and range for your end result. Since you can use multiple effects at once, you can do wonderful things like both blurring and desaturating the background, making what's in the spotlight stand out even more.
- The Shape group controls the position, dimensions, and other aspects of the spotlight.
- Center lets you move the spotlight around.
- Size changes the spotlight's size.
- Feather softens the spotlight's edges.
- Angle changes the spotlight's tilt. Values further from the center makes the spotlight elliptical, and with Angle Tracks Center off, it behaves more like a fixed-point light emitting outwards when Center is moved, than a mobile light.
- Angle Tracks Center changes the behavior so Center and Angle will always have the same relative size, regardless of position. Enabling this is useful if you want to easily move the spotlight around from a mobile source, like if you were jiggling a flashlight at your screen.
- Transparent Background means everything almost outside the light becomes invisible, so you can use Spotlight as an overlay on top of a background clip.
- The Spotlight and Background groups have the same controls, with Spotlight affecting what's inside the light, while Background affects everything else. If Transparent Background is enabled, Background settings only control the feathered area between the Spotlight and Background.
- Tint color picker sets the spotlight/background's tint.
- Tint control adjusts the strength of the spotlight/background's tint. At 0, there's no tint. At higher values, the image becomes more tinted. At lower values, the tint becomes inversed.
- Color adjusts the spotlight/background's saturation. At higher values, the image becomes more intense. At lower values, the image fades to black and white.
- Brightness adjusts the spotlight/background's brightness.
- Clarity is a special kind of contrast that adjusts the spotlight/background's dynamic range. Higher values appear crisper and cinematic.
- Blur adjusts the spotlight/background's blur, which can give you anything from a light haze to a severe defocus.