How to create a tutorial that can highlight a part of screen, blur the rest, and have me on cam

[douglas_3548]

Hi everyone,

I'm working on creating a tutorial video where I want to highlight specific parts of a website or app interface. Ideally, I’d like to zoom or pan into the highlighted section while blurring out the rest of the screen to help viewers stay focused. I’d also like to add arrows pointing to key areas.

I’m not sure what this effect or tool is called, but I’ve seen it used in tutorial videos—specifically from Jeff Su’s YouTube channel. I’ll upload a screenshot as an example to better explain what I mean.

Any suggestions on what tools or techniques I should look into would be greatly appreciated.

[Warren Heaton]

@douglas_3548 

To recreate what's shown in your screenshot, you could put the screenshot of the spreadsheet on Video Track 1 (the wider shot) and apply Gaussian Blur.  In Video Track 2, a screenshot of the cells of the spreadsheet (probably prepared in Photoshop ahead of time.  In Video Track 3, the talking head footage placed in a Graphic with a rectangle shape with rounded corners fill with the the footage and a drop shadow.

Another approach would be to assemble the talking head footage and any still images that go with it, arrange them for timing, and then send everything over to After Effects.

[douglas_3548]

I dont think he is using a screenshot since you can see him do it live and moving his mouse. In the video starting at 14:49 to 14:54 you can see him doing it live and his mouse is moving. https://youtu.be/GchXMRwuWxE?t=889

[Warren Heaton]

A screen recording can be placed in Video Track 1 instead of a screenshot.  Same with a close up in Video Track 2.

It's possible that the sample you're linking to was done entirely in a screen recording app like Screenflow where picture-in-picture and callouts are done right in that application's Timeline.

[Carlos Ziade]

He already shared his Creator Essentials: https://www.jeffsu.org/creator-essentials/

but you can achieve the same with Premiere Pro and preferrably After Effects.

Try to look for Motion Graphics Templates on Adobe Stock, or create your own

inside After Effects and save them as mogrts, then import to Premiere Pro.

you will have to screen record at high resolution so that you don't loose quality 

when scaling up.

Inside Premiere Pro you can achieve this by masking and duplicating,

then keyframing the blur effects. Rectangle Strokes can be created with shapes

and controlled in the Properties Panel. Same for arrows.

Again, I really advise After Effects use for this type of motion graphics, then

bring them to your Premier Pro timeline. 

Tip: make sure to encode your screen recorded footage to constant frame rate

before importing into premiere pro, as most screen recorded footage is variable frame rate.