The Spotlight effect fills the center of your screen with a bright circle of light that fades to black toward the edges, leaving the rest of the screen dark. Point it at a subject and it acts like a single hard light; display it to a room and it reads as a stage spotlight or a focal point for a reveal.
Before you start
- A screen you can dim the room around. The effect only reads as a spotlight when the area around it is genuinely darker than the lit circle — under normal room lighting the dark edges just look like a gray screen.
- A decision about how you're using it: as a light source pointed at someone or something, or as a display shown outward to an audience. The two setups below use different placement.
- A second screen, if you're presenting from a laptop. Running Spotlight on the same screen as your slides or notes covers them.
Set it up
- Open the Spotlight effect on the screen you want to use.
- Set Color Temperature to match the scene — Daylight or Cool White for a clean white beam, Warm White or Tungsten for a warmer, more theatrical tone.
- Set Brightness to around 80–100 to start, and leave Beam Size at 20 until you can see the result in place.
- Dim the room lights around the screen. The darker the surroundings, the more the circle reads as a spotlight rather than a lit rectangle.
- Select Go Fullscreen so the lit circle fills the screen with no page layout or browser tabs around it.
- Adjust Beam Size until the lit pool covers what you want it to and no more.
- Position the screen: face it at your subject if it's a light source, or face it at your audience if it's a display.
You'll know it worked when you see one bright circle centered on the screen with soft, dark edges, and the rest of the display is black.
To leave fullscreen, press Escape or move your mouse and select Exit Fullscreen.
What each control does
| Control | Range | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brightness | 10–100 | 80 | Overall output of the lit circle. The main dial for "too dim" or "too blown out." |
| Beam Size | 10–50 | 20 | How much of the screen the lit pool covers. The solid core reaches out to roughly this share of the screen, then fades to black over about the same distance again — so 20 is solid to a fifth of the way out and gone by two-fifths, while 50 fills the screen with a soft vignette instead of a tight circle. |
| Color Temperature | Daylight → Tungsten | Daylight | The color of the light, from 6500K neutral white down to 2700K warm. Match this to the mood or the room's other lighting. |
Beam Size changes total light output as well as coverage — a wider beam lights more of the subject, so you can often drop Brightness a little when you open it up. The circle always stays centered; there's no control to move it off-center.
Common setups
- Light source pointed at a subject or product. Brightness 90–100, Beam Size 30–40, Daylight or Cool White, screen close to the subject and centered on it. The wider beam puts more total light on the subject while the darker edges keep the background from lifting.
- Tight dramatic pinspot. Beam Size 10–15, Brightness 100, in as dark a room as you can manage. This is the hardest, most theatrical look the effect makes — a small bright disc with most of the screen black around it.
- Display shown outward to an audience. Brightness 70–90, Beam Size 25–35, Warm White or Tungsten for a theatrical feel, screen or TV facing the room. Use it to open a presentation or mark a moment on stage without any other props.
- Second monitor or TV as the spotlight. Run Spotlight on a spare display facing the room while your main screen keeps slides or notes. Beam Size 40–50 reads better on a large TV, where a tight beam leaves most of the panel dark and looks like a fault rather than a choice.
Troubleshooting
The spotlight looks like a gray rectangle, not a dark stage. The room is too bright relative to the screen. Dim or turn off the lights around the display — this effect fades to black at the edges, and it only reads as "dark" if the room is actually darker than the lit circle.
The light looks weak even at full brightness. Once Brightness is at 100, open Beam Size up instead — a wider pool puts more total light on the subject than a narrow one at the same brightness. Beyond that, move the screen closer or dim the room further so the same output reads as brighter by contrast.
The lit circle covers too much of the screen and doesn't look like a spotlight. Beam Size is too high for the look you want. Bring it down toward 10–20 for a defined circle with real darkness around it; at 50 the effect is closer to a soft vignette than a spotlight.
The color looks wrong on camera. Your camera is white-balancing against the room, not the screen. Match Color Temperature to your other lighting — Tungsten or Warm White under household bulbs, Daylight or Cool White near a window — and lock white balance in your camera app if it offers the option.
Screen sharing this in a call shows my controls or browser tabs, not just the light. Go fullscreen before you share, and share that specific window rather than your whole desktop, so viewers only see the lit circle.
I'm still seeing my browser tabs and address bar around the light. Go Fullscreen asks the browser for true fullscreen, but some contexts refuse that request — most often when the page is embedded in another site's frame. The effect still covers the whole browser window, so it stays usable; to get an unbroken lit surface, open the effect in its own tab rather than an embed, then select Go Fullscreen again.
Next steps
For a directional light aimed at a face rather than a centered stage circle, try Key Light. To pair a dramatic opening with rotating announcements or content, look at Slideshow.