Spotlights

A spotlight dims the whole plot except one region. Where a zone adds something, a spotlight subtracts everything else — which is far stronger when the chart is busy.

Press s and drag.

Shape

Rectangle or ellipse. The ellipse is softer and reads as "around here"; the rectangle reads as "this exact range".

The three controls that matter

Field	Effect
Dim opacity	How dark everything outside gets
Feather	How soft the edge of the hole is
Ring	An optional outline around the hole itself

Two combinations cover most uses:

• Dim 0 + a ring — no dimming at all, just a highlight. Use it when the chart is already clean and you only need to point.
• Moderate dim + heavy feather — a soft wide glow. Use it when you want attention without hiding the surrounding context.

Full dim with no feather is available and rarely right: it hides the very context that makes the highlighted part mean anything.

Timing

The usual three fields. A spotlight is one of the few annotations where the disappears at column earns its keep — the effect is strong enough that leaving it up for the rest of the video becomes tiring.

Reveal

Fading a spotlight in is almost always better than an instant cut, because the dimming covers the entire frame and an instant change of the whole picture reads as a glitch. A short fade over two or three candle-widths is enough.

Presets

Several spotlight quick-styles ship built in. Saving your own captures the shape's look and its motion, including the ring, which is one of the fields that only exists once a shape does — so it travels in a preset but is not part of the tool's remembered default.