Re: [css4-color] Grayscale shorthand (with alpha)

On Apr 18, 2012, at 1:41 PM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:

> His examples show what he's asking for:
> * creating a partially-transparent dark shadow
> * putting a partially-transparent "dark" or "light" background on some
> text placed over a busy image, to aid in establishing proper contrast

I do that sort of thing a lot too. Most of the time, I don't want a complicated pallette of colors. Using white or black with low alpha is very useful on backgrounds, text, shadows, borders, etc. to just change the value without changing the hue. It doesn't even have to be a complicated background behind it. It might be a solid color, and then I can try out different background colors with the transluscent black or white element in front of it. For this, it doesn't matter if the ink effect is normal or multiply; the results are the same. 

For images, it would be handy to have a multiply ink. I recently created some images that were black logos with no white (just alpha), and then used opacity to adjust how much they would darken the solid color background. If I had the choice to set a multiply ink, then I could have used black and white images that I already had, instead of having to turn them into black and alpha in PhotoShop.

I do agree that being able to set black and white with alpha as a shorthand for rgba and hsla is a great idea.

Received on Thursday, 19 April 2012 05:27:56 UTC