Easy way to make text semitransparent?

Hi all,

Is there an easy way to make text semitransparent in MATLAB? For instance, if I wanted a textbox label on a graph to be only partially transparent, is there any property to adjust, similar to 'AlphaData' for images?

Thanks!

[Sebastian]

You could change the color of the text by 'color',[0.8,0.8,0.8]

It's not transparent but assuming that you have a white background it is slightly grey to white and looks transparent.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Unfortunately No. You have to convert the text to a bitmap and display it as an image (or surface) with appropriate transparency.

There are contributions in the FEX to assist with converting text to image.

[Jared]

Rats. I was afraid of that. Thanks for the response!

[Matthias Luh]

It is crazy to see that this is still an issue in 2022... :(

[Voss]

Lots of things are crazy.

Answer 2

[Matthias Luh]

Well, not exactly transparent I guess. But if your plot window is white, you could brighten the font up, so it looks transparent...

my_color = [0 0 1]; % [r g b] => blue
text(2, 1, 'normal text', 'Color', my_color);
opacity = 0.4; % 40 percent visible = mainly transparent
text(2, 1.5, 'kinda transparent text', 'Color', (1 - opacity * (1 - my_color)));

I'm sure someone will also find a way for non-white backgrounds...

[Sebastian Lopez]

Works great. Thank you!

[Giovanni Barbarino]

for non white bachground you can just take the color of the background and do a convex combination with the text color.

probably something like

f_color = get(gcf,'Color')