Pressing the Highlight key temporarily adjusts the selected fixtures to ‘open white’, with intensity at full and all other parameters at their default settings. This function can be useful when you want to see the beam of a fixture on a lit stage, when assigning focus positions for example. Highlight only changes the parameter values in the output, not in the current cue or in the Programmer or editor, and highlight has the highest priority when the console determines a parameter's output value.
Highlight will remain active until you press the Highlight key again, and you can use the Next and Back keys to highlight in turn each fixture in the current selection.
You can release each parameter from highlight by adjusting its value in the Programmer or editor, letting you modify parameters whilst keeping the fixture beam as visible as possible. For example, suppose that you have a Studio Spot 575 subtly lighting a part of the stage setting with a dark blue breakup gobo, softened using the frost parameter and with the iris controlling the beam size. The piece of set that the Studio Spot is lighting has been moved, and you need to refocus it while keeping the rest of the lighting state on stage so that rehearsals can continue. To do this using Highlight:
Select the Studio Spot in the Programmer.
Press the Highlight key. The Studio Spot will retain its position on stage, but the intensity will go to full, the colour to white, the gobo and frost to open, and the iris to 100%, so that you can see the beam clearly on the lit stage.
Adjust the pan and tilt parameters to position the Studio Spot as required.
Adjust the iris parameter to give the correct beam size.
Press the Highlight key again to release the colour, gobo and frost parameters from Highlight, so that they return to their original programmed values. The values for pan, tilt and iris retain their new values in the Programmer.
Press Update and OK to record the changes in the appropriate cue; see Auto Update.
By default, highlight brings intensity to full, with all colour and beam parameters at their default values. However, you can use a palette to assign the highlight values for each parameter of each fixture. This can be useful as the default highlight values for some parameters may not be what you want; for example, you may prefer to leave zoom, focus and iris settings unaltered by Highlight so that you can see the programmed beam size and edge quality.
To assign a pre-existing palette to be the highlight palette, right-click it in the palette
directory and select it as the highlight palette. The highlight palette is shown by
the 
icon in the palette directory window.
![[Tip]](../images/tip.png) | Tip |
|---|---|
You can use masking when creating the highlight palette to ensure that all the required parameter types are included; see Recording Palettes with Kind Masking. |
By default, the parameters of fixtures that are not selected when you use highlight remain at their current output values. You can customise the output values of these parameters during highlight by creating a lowlight palette. For example, you could create a lowlight palette that sets the intensity of all fixtures to 30%, to give the highlighted fixture greater contrast.
Note that lowlight only affects parameter values of the non-selected fixtures in the current editor. Parameter values being output by playbacks will not be affected.
To assign a pre-existing palette to be the lowlight palette, right-click it in the palette
directory and select it as the lowlight palette. The lowlight palette is shown by
the 
icon in the palette directory window.
| Tip |
|---|---|
You can use masking when creating the lowlight palette to ensure that all the required parameter types are included; see Recording Palettes with Kind Masking. |