Comments on: Make Your Text Stand Out!

By: Visio Guy

Visio Guy — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:15:31 +0000

Try it: Microsoft Visio 2010 (click "Try Visio 2010") Or buy it: Buy Microsoft Visio 2010

By: Zoey

Zoey — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 11:44:02 +0000

Very interesting Ted

Where can i get hold of the visio program

By: Visio Guy

Visio Guy — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:51:15 +0000

Good stuff, Ted!

I used to play around with trying to make tints and shades of the fill color, using the HSL( ), HUE( ), SAT( ), LUM( ) functions, but never got it to work right.

Visio 2007 added some new functions: SHADE and TINT which make things easier, but you still run into the problem of white and black – a shade of white is just white.

But your Modulus technique is cool. I never thought about how Modulus can be used to “wrap around” ’til I read one of David Parker’s articles: Using Fill Patterns with DataGraphic Color By Value Nice solution to the what text-color to choose for extreme colors like black and white!

By: Ted

Ted — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:29:58 +0000

Another way to go that I have used is to have the text color cell to set text color off of fill color.
Conceptually….text color RGB = mod((RGB(fill color) – 130),255). This automatically sets text to a light color if fill is dark and vice versa. This does tend to keep the text color in the family of fill color
(light reddish text for dark reddish fill)

The”Pythagorean” algorithm could be used to set the text color in a more independent form than fill color
(shades of white-gray-black regardless of fill color family). May need to play with coefficients since
gray text on pink is pretty hard to read.