Realistic Highlighter Effect (No Plugins)

Today I'll quickly show you how to make that realistic highlighter effect, the kind where a translucent stroke sweeps across your text like someone actually ran a marker over it, with no plugins at all. If you've got Final Cut, you can do this.

Build the highlighter

Bring a custom generator over your text clip and change its color to yellow (or whatever highlighter color you want). Scale it down so it fits over your words, and lower the opacity a bit so you can see where you're placing it. Make the perimeter a little wider and taller than you think you need, you'll see why in a second. Then change the blend mode to Darken so your text shows through and stands out.

Make the edges look real

Go to your effects and grab Crop and Feather, drop it on the generator, and drag the feather slider to the left. That's why we sized the perimeter a little bigger, now the edges look soft and real, like an actual marker instead of a hard-edged box.

Animate the sweep

To reveal it on screen, add a Wipe transition to the generator. There's a little point on the transition that controls how gradual the reveal is (basically the feathering), slide that in, since a real highlighter doesn't have much feather where you first press down. Then drag the transition's duration out so the highlight takes a little longer to sweep across.

Add motion and finish

For a bit more life, select the highlighter generator and your text and make a compound clip (Option G), then add a Ken Burns move by going to Crop → Ken Burns and adjusting the end position. Throw a sound effect or two on, and you're done. Got more than one line to highlight? Just duplicate your finished generator and adjust it into place.