arcgis-desktopcartographytext;transparency
I am trying to insert a watermark into a map using ArcGIS. As you can see from the screenshot, I have the text in place, although I need to make the text transparent (e.g. 50% transparency). I used "insert text from the Insert menu to add the text. There does not seem to be any way to accomplish this using the insert text method.
Is there another way to include transparent text in a map layout?
If you are looking for the simple diagonal hatch method you mention, this can be achieved by symbolizing the home range polygons as unique categories. First use the '10% Simple hatch' symbol for all, and then customize the individual symbol patches. For each symbol, click on the Edit Symbol button where you can modify this line fill symbol's color, angle and separation (the offset can also help with multiple overlaps). Unless you have more than five overlaps, using these different settings for each home range should give you a crosshatching visualization that can still be easy to read. (@Llaves link to the blog post is super cool!)
I've usually used one of two methods to shade the interior of polygons. Assuming this is our set of input polygons:
Option 1 is to use the Buffer tool, create a buffer of negative distance (e.g. -500 meters) and set the line_side parameter to OUTSIDE_ONLY. This will generate areas inside of each polygon, giving the nice look of country borders on a political map when combined with a transparency setting:
Option 2 is to convert polygons to lines and then use the Euclidean Distance tool (in Spatial Analyst) to create a distance raster. Use ExtractByAttributes to remove areas farther than you want to shade, change the raster symbology to Stretched with the min/max values equal to 0 and your max distance. Add in some transparency, and it looks pretty good:
If you wanted a different color for each raster area, you could rasterize the R/G/B values for each polygon, multiply them by the fraction of the max distance, and merge them back into a multiband raster. Let me know if you want more detailed instructions on this part.
Best Answer
Try using an annotation feature class for the 'DRAFT' text, manually editing the text, and setting the transparency for the layer at 50%.
This allows you to see the features under the text, and it is not necessary to export the document for use in another program.