How to change text transparency in HTML/CSS?

Asked 31/5, 2012 at 14:21 Answered 24/10, 2023 at 11:28

153

I'm very new to HTML/CSS and I'm trying to display some text as like 50% transparent. So far I have the HTML to display the text with full opacity

<html><font color=\"black\" face=\"arial\" size=\"4\">THIS IS MY TEXT</font></html>

However, I'm not sure how to change its opacity. I've tried looking online, but I'm not sure exactly what to do with the code I find.

Maulmain answered 31/5, 2012 at 14:21 Comment(0)

333

opacity applies to the whole element, so if you have a background, border or other effects on that element, those will also become transparent. If you only want the text to be transparent, use rgba.

#foo {
    color: #000; /* Fallback for older browsers */
    color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);

    font-size: 16pt;
    font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
}

Also, steer far, far away from <font>. We have CSS for that now.

Hipparch answered 31/5, 2012 at 14:43 Comment(12)

A far superior solution compared to the accepted answer, IMO. You do not need to add an additional span element to the HTML to apply opacity solely to the text. – Diploma 11/8, 2014 at 18:27

This is the solution. – Packthread 13/11, 2014 at 14:58

what browsers are "old" in this sense? – Ruthanneruthe 19/1, 2015 at 18:43

@RickDavies According to caniuse.com, IE9 or higher is required. If you need to support IE8, you still need the fallback. Otherwise, you should be fine with just rgba. – Hipparch 19/1, 2015 at 20:12

Hmmmm, neither is the opacity property. Wow. – Gammy 4/6, 2015 at 19:18

It works here on this site when I do it via inspector, but not on my local test site. Weird. And the property isn't overriden. Whaaaaaaaaat. – Gammy 4/6, 2015 at 19:19

Wait, it's because opacity isn't allowed on the :visited pseudo class? What?!? I never knew. I think that's lame. – Gammy 4/6, 2015 at 19:22

@Gammy Modern browsers place those limits to protect the user's privacy, see MDN for an explanation. You can still use rgba for :visited rules but you can only change the red, green and blue components. The alpha component is always taken from the non-visited style. (Also, your comment is a bit off-topic. It might be better as a separate question, and it would also be more visible to other answerers.) – Hipparch 4/6, 2015 at 20:54

@MattiasBuelens I found that article, but I think that rather than preventing us from styling :visited, a better approach would be to prevent getComputedStyles() from returning any meaningful information information thieves. Then we could style to our heart's content. – Gammy 6/6, 2015 at 7:2

this does not worked for me, while setting color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0) on a <div> element. the reason was that for body{} was also a color set which then was displayed instead the color of the <div>. removing the color definition in body{} worked in the end. – Staggs 23/11, 2016 at 20:9

Just a note: this solution changes not only opacity but the color as well. – Nabalas 27/4, 2017 at 2:39

@vchrizz To override previously set rule use " !important" keyword. example: color: rgba( 0, 255, 0, 0.5) !important – Nabalas 27/4, 2017 at 2:43

121

Check Opacity, You can set this css property to the div, the <p> or using <span> you want to make transparent

And by the way, the font tag is deprecated, use css to style the text

div {
    opacity: 0.5;
}

Edit: This code will make the whole element transparent, if you want to make ** just the text ** transparent check @Mattias Buelens answer

Tortola answered 31/5, 2012 at 14:25 Comment(4)

This answer is incorrect. Its code makes entire element (div) translucent. The Question specified only the text. The higher-voted sibling answer should be the accepted one. – Damron 19/12, 2014 at 2:37

Thank you. It really helped me hiding a text in my wordpress template. Instead of (opacity: 0.5;) I just used (opacity:0;). – Threecolor 7/1, 2016 at 14:57

@BasilBourque you're absolutely right however, selector targeting makes this answer valid. example: h1 {opacity: 0.5;} – Tacy 27/10, 2023 at 21:59

An advantage of this answer is that, if the element has only text in it (you can add a span for that purpose if it isn't already the case), then you don't need to know the current color to set the opacity. The answer linked by Basil requires overriding the color values. If you later change the general theme of the site, e.g. from light to dark, you need to remember to also change color: rgb(x,y,z,0.5), whereas opacity: 0.5 is color-independent. (One can argue it's technically incorrect, and that's not wrong, but I find this the easiest and most maintainable solution.) – Photoperiod 1/12, 2023 at 18:15

Just use the rgba tag as your text color. You could use opacity, but that would affect the whole element, not just the text. Say you have a border, it would make that transparent as well.

.text
    {
        font-family: Garamond, serif;
        font-size: 12px;
        color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
    }

Hau answered 2/12, 2014 at 16:30 Comment(0)

Your best solution is to look at the "opacity" tag of an element.

For example:

.image
{
    opacity:0.4;
    filter:alpha(opacity=40); /* For IE8 and earlier */
}

So in your case it should look something like :

<html><span style="opacity: 0.5;"><font color=\"black\" face=\"arial\" size=\"4\">THIS IS MY TEXT</font></html>

However don't forget the tag isn't supported in HTML5.

You should use a CSS too :)

Eggshell answered 31/5, 2012 at 14:29 Comment(0)

What about the css opacity attribute? 0 to 1 values.

But then you probably need to use a more explicit dom element than "font". For instance:

<html><body><span style=\"opacity: 0.5;\"><font color=\"black\" face=\"arial\" size=\"4\">THIS IS MY TEXT</font></span></body></html>

As an additional information I would of course suggest you use CSS declarations outside of your html elements, but as well try to use the font css style instead of the font html tag.

For cross browser css3 styles generator, have a look at http://css3please.com/

Parlous answered 31/5, 2012 at 14:22 Comment(0)

color-mix

(see support table)

color-mix can be used to mix currentColor with other colors (like transparent):

html {
  font: 700 2em Arial;
  color: red;
}

p:first-of-type {
  /* 50% opacity of currentColor which derrives from the inherited color property */
  color: color-mix(in srgb, currentColor 50%, transparent);
}

<p>Text with color opacity</p>
<p>Normal text color</p>

Relative color syntax

With this new CSS ability (css-color-5) which allows color format transformations, it also will also allow adding opacity to any color in any format, for example, to RGB (relative transformations can be done to any other format):

 /* assume some sort of a base color variable */
html { --color: red; }

/* convert the color variable to RGB+A */
p { color: rgb(from var(--color) r g b / 50%) }

<p>Text with opacity</p>

~~(As of writing, not yet available in browsers. Will update once arrives)~~ - Working with limitation: still cannot use currentColor as the base color (see tests)

Rancourt answered 10/4, 2022 at 16:23 Comment(0)

Easy! after your:

<font color=\"black\" face=\"arial\" size=\"4\">

add this one:

<font style="opacity:.6">

you just have to change the ".6" for a decimal number between 1 and 0

Percheron answered 4/12, 2013 at 19:14 Comment(0)

There is no CSS property like background-opacity that you can use only for changing the opacity or transparency of an element's background without affecting the child elements, on the other hand if you will try to use the CSS opacity property it will not only changes the opacity of background but changes the opacity of all the child elements as well. In such situation you can use RGBA color introduced in CSS3 that includes alpha transparency as part of the color value. Using RGBA color you can set the color of the background as well as its transparency.

Gothard answered 19/2, 2015 at 10:29 Comment(0)

try to play around with mix-blend-mode: multiply;

color: white;
background: black;
mix-blend-mode: multiply;

MDN

tutorial

Unshaped answered 10/9, 2018 at 20:7 Comment(0)

If you use opacity to a element, entire element effect that(background+other things in it),you can use mix-blend-mode to the CSS attributes of the specific element,

Refer these sites:

https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/m/mix-blend-mode/

https://css-tricks.com/basics-css-blend-modes/

Spermatocyte answered 6/12, 2020 at 15:22 Comment(0)

I know this is an old and answered thread, but it's the first result I got in google when searching for changing text opacity, so I will add my solution here for anyone else looking for this.

The answers here were not exactly satisfactory to me, using rgba was not an option for me, I wanted the color of the text to be defined as a css variable, and alter it's opacity without changin the background opacity so opacity property was not an option either.

However, I've figured out that there's a trick you can use with the new color-mix property. Simply mix the current text color with a completely transparent one and the mixing ration becomes the new color opacity:

:root {
 --text-color: #fcba03;
}

.example {
  color: var(--text-color);
  background: black;
  padding: 24px;
}

.opaque-text {
  color: color-mix(in srgb, var(--text-color) 50%, rgba(255, 255, 255, 0));
}

<div class="example">
  <span>
    Regular Text
  </span>
  <br />
  <span class="opaque-text">
    Opaque Text
  </span>
</div>

This can also be used with the currentColor instead of var(--text-color).

Perceptual answered 24/10, 2023 at 11:28 Comment(0)

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