Highlight a text line, dim background

[rob40wilson03]

To be honest this isnt all that photography-related, but if somebody could help me that would be great.

I'm moderately experienced with Photoshop, but I have no idea how to do this....

I want to take a screen-grab of several lines of text and select one line to highlight and dim the rest of the image... as is often done on TV when a whole print document is displayed and they want you to read one line

I feel like this would be very simple, but I just dont know a good way to do it.

Thanks in advance

 

[dkf10425]

Load the screen grab into photoshop. Duplicate the layer. Use curves to dim the image. Add a layer mask and paint with black to reveal the text. Hold down the shift key when painting to paint in a straight line. As always there are other ways to do this in photoshop, but this is a quick easy way.

 

[K8-90]

Another way (as dkf10425 said, there are many ways!) is:

1. Use rectangle selection tool, and select text
2. Invert selection (ctrl+I)
3. Create new layer
4. Fill the selection (Fill/Bucket tool) with black (on the new layer!!!)
5. Change opacity of the new layer to what you want

It could also be cool to blur some of the text you dont want...

 

[Apex]

You could have it stick out even more by adding a drop shadow to the layer with the text on it.