{"id":176481,"date":"2011-08-11T22:54:41","date_gmt":"2011-08-11T22:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=176481"},"modified":"2018-12-18T10:37:29","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T18:37:29","slug":"using-basemap-transparency","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-online\/mapping\/using-basemap-transparency","title":{"rendered":"Using Basemap Transparency"},"author":7641,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_searchwp_excluded":""},"categories":[22941],"tags":[23171,33371,94842],"industry":[],"product":[36551],"class_list":["post-176481","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mapping","tag-basemaps","tag-map-viewer","tag-transparency","product-arcgis-online"],"acf":{"short_description":"With the latest update to ArcGIS Online you can now tone down your basemap to make other layers \u201cpop\u201d by using transparency. ","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p>With the latest update to ArcGIS Online you can now tone down your basemap to make other\u00a0layers \u201cpop\u201d by using transparency. We covered a different technique to\u00a0accomplish this in\u00a0<a title=\"View blog post\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/Support\/blogs\/arcgisonline\/archive\/2011\/04\/26\/toning-down-your-basemaps.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an earlier post<\/a>\u00a0and also covered some new basemaps in progress\u00a0in\u00a0<a title=\"View blog post\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.esri.com\/Info\/blogs\/esri-insider\/archive\/2011\/07\/25\/inside-new-basemaps.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">another post on the Esri Insider<\/a>. But let\u2019s take a closer look at how the new basemap transparency can be used to tone down your basemap.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s our map showing faults in the south-central portion of Nevada. The purple fault lines are little hard to see against the dark imagery background, and since these are from a published service we can\u2019t interactively change the color.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/downloads2.esri.com\/blogs\/images\/support_3601.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We could choose a different basemap, but another alternative if we want to use the same imagery basemap is to adjust its transparency.<\/p>\n<p>Hover over the basemap in the map contents and click the arrow that appears to choose transparency and display the transparency slider:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/downloads2.esri.com\/blogs\/images\/support_3602.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s our improved map that enables the purple fault lines to be more easily seen.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/downloads2.esri.com\/blogs\/images\/support_3603.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(Note that basemap transparency is currently supported only using the\u00a0<a title=\"Open map viewer\" href=\"http:\/\/www.arcgis.com\/home\/webmap\/viewer.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ArcGIS.com map viewer<\/a>\u00a0and not in\u00a0<a title=\"Start Explorer Online\" href=\"http:\/\/explorer.arcgis.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Explorer Online<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; it will be soon.)<\/p>\n"}],"authors":[{"ID":7641,"user_firstname":"Bernie","user_lastname":"Szukalski","nickname":"Bern Szukalski","user_nicename":"bszukalski","display_name":"Bern Szukalski","user_email":"bszukalski@esri.com","user_url":"","user_registered":"2018-03-26 17:55:14","user_description":"Bern Szukalski is a corporate technology evangelist, advocate, and solution engineer at Esri, where he has spent over 40 years on innovative projects and pioneering product development. He is currently focused on ways to broaden access to geographic information and helping customers succeed with ArcGIS. On a good day he's making a map; on a great day, he's on one. Email bszukalski@esri.com or connect on LinkedIn (https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/bernszukalski\/).","user_avatar":"<img data-del=\"avatar\" src='https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2026\/02\/bern04-465x465.png' class='avatar pp-user-avatar avatar-96 photo ' height='96' width='96'\/>"}],"related_articles":"","card_image":false,"wide_image":false},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Using Basemap Transparency<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/arcgis-online\/mapping\/using-basemap-transparency\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Using Basemap Transparency\" \/>\n<meta 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He is currently focused on ways to broaden access to geographic information and helping customers succeed with ArcGIS. On a good day he's making a map; on a great day, he's on one. Email bszukalski@esri.com or connect on LinkedIn (https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/bernszukalski\/).","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/bernszukalski\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/author\/bszukalski"}]}},"text_date":"August 11, 2011","author_name":"Bern Szukalski","author_page":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/author\/bszukalski","custom_image":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Newsroom-Keyart-Wide-1920-x-1080.jpg","primary_product":"ArcGIS Online","tag_data":[{"term_id":23171,"name":"basemaps","slug":"basemaps","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":23171,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":192,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":33371,"name":"Map Viewer","slug":"map-viewer","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":33371,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":162,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":94842,"name":"transparency","slug":"transparency","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":94842,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":4,"filter":"raw"}],"category_data":[{"term_id":22941,"name":"Mapping","slug":"mapping","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":22941,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":2737,"filter":"raw"}],"product_data":[{"term_id":36551,"name":"ArcGIS Online","slug":"arcgis-online","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":36551,"taxonomy":"product","description":"","parent":0,"count":2464,"filter":"raw"}],"primary_product_link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/?s=#&products=arcgis-online","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog\/176481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog\/176481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176481"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=176481"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=176481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}