How do I create highlights on a screenshot?

Here's a guide for The GIMP

Install GIMP

Create Highlighted Rectangle

  1. Select Rectangle Tool:

    • tick Feather Edges choose Radius e.g. 5.0 pixels for smooth borders
    • tick Highlight to highlight the selection

    enter image description here

  2. Select area to highlight

  3. SelectNone to remove selection.

The selection is now highlighted.

Highlight effect

Note: in some versions of GIMP the highlighting may be removed as soon as we select another tool or save the image. In this case, we can proceed as follows to keep the area highlighted:

  1. Invert the selection (SelectInvert or Ctrl+i).
  2. Bucket-fill the background with black 30% opacity.

Create Crayon

  1. Choose Ellipse Select Tool or e to select area for crayon
  2. SelectBorder e.g. with 8 pixels
  3. Paintbrush Tool choose brush e.g. Galaxy, choose color e.g. yellow
  4. Paint selection until happy

Crayon effect


You can do this in editors such as Pinta, Shutter*, the GIMP, etc.

The process may vary, but one way to do it, would be to place a translucent square/rectangle in a second layer above the image, and then to cut out the part that you want to glow.

Example workflow:

enter image description here

  • Open your screenshot in Pinta.
    1. Create a new layer.
    2. Select the new layer
    3. Choose the paintbucket tool.
    4. Change the colour to black, but set the opacity to 150.
    5. Now use the rectangle selection tool to select the area you want to highlight.
    6. Fill the layer with this colour.
    7. Hit delete.
  • The image should now be highlighted.

example


* Shutter is more for accomplishing the reverse effect.


  1. Take a screenshot

    I use shutter and gnome-screenshot to take screenshot, you may use any one of them.To install them, use the commands.

    sudo apt-get install shutter
    sudo apt-get install gnome-screenshot
    
  2. Install gimp
    We will need this for the editing.Install it with

    sudo apt-get install gimp
    
  3. Get the screenshot into gimp I dragged the image into gimp.You may use file -->open

  4. The fun begins

    • We first select the part we want white.We can hold Shift to select multiple areas. Then we invert the selection using Ctrl+I enter image description here
    • Then we select the paintbrush tool. enter image description here
    • Now we change the opacity and increase size.
      enter image description here
    • Paint everything.If it's darker, change opacity and try again.For me, 50% was fine. And the end result is.
      enter image description here

NOTE: The options for gimp were available easily for me because I have customised it a lot. Use some gimp tutorial to learn how to use it.