topic Re: Grey out surrounding raster area? in ArcGIS Pro Questions

Grey out surrounding raster area?

Bud — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 19:52:17 GMT

In ArcGIS Pro, is there an easy way to grey out the surrounding raster area around a "light of day" rectangle?

Idea: Draw attention to an area of a map by fading the periphery

Re: Grey out surrounding raster area

geo-theo — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:14:20 GMT

The easiest approach would be to duplicate the raster layer, clip the top copy to your desired 'Light Of Day' rectangle, and then remove color bands from the bottom raster.

Copy raster (in contents pane > right click raster feature layer > copy).
Paste raster as new layer (in map > right click > paste).
With your original raster now as the bottom layer, grey it out with a grayscale raster function (Imagery tab > Raster Functions > Grayscale). Or you could just make it look faded out (Appearance tab > set transparency to something like 75%).
With your new raster now as the top layer, you want to clip it to a rectangle polygon to serve as your Light Of Day view (like cropping a photo to a predetermined size). To do this, create a new feature class (call it something like "LoD_clip") and draw your rectangle polygon directly with the feature class editing (or convert an existing rectangle area to a polygon). Use the clip tool (input feature: raster layer / clip to: LoD_clip) and it will output a new layer that is just your raster within the bounds of the clip's rectangle window.
Uncheck visibility of (or simply remove) the unclipped color raster, leaving you with the full-color clipped raster at the top, and the greyed-out raster at the bottom of the drawing order.

This should be the simplest way to get everything inside the Light Of Day rectangle to stay full color while everything outside appears greyed-out.

Re: Grey out surrounding raster area?

Robert_LeClair — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:36:08 GMT

The Clip function—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation raster function in ArcGIS Pro could also be a solid workflow to consider too. Use the Inside/Outside parameter to screen out the surrounding AOI/box. Place the new result in-memory layer on top of the original then set a transparency for the original layer.

Re: Grey out surrounding raster area?

BrennanSmith1 — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:11:03 GMT

Not quite what you asked, but we often need to do something similar, with a greyed out "reverse mask" around various watershed polygons. We have this function set up to turn any polygon / feature class into a cutout of itself, inside a circular buffer of whatever distance. If you pass it fields, you can use these reverse masks inside a Map Series too, to highlight specific regions as you loop through.

This would require that your graphics layer be a feature class.

import arcpy import os def create_reverse_mask(input_fc, output_name, buffer_dist=10000, fields=[]): """ Creates a 'cutout' mask from input polygons and adds it to the map with 75% transparent grey symbology. input_fc : Layer in TOC, or path to feature class output_name : Can be a full path, or just the name (in which case, save to scratchGDB) buffer_dist : Map Units. Set as big as needed for layout fields : Define the fields to copy over from input (or leave empty) """ # Prevent double-adding to TOC arcpy.env.addOutputsToMap = False # --- Path Handling --- if os.path.isabs(output_name): out_dir = os.path.dirname(output_name) out_base = os.path.basename(output_name) output_fc = output_name else: out_dir = arcpy.env.scratchGDB out_base = output_name output_fc = os.path.join(out_dir, out_base) # --- Initialize Feature Class --- if not arcpy.Exists(output_fc): sr = arcpy.Describe(input_fc).spatialReference arcpy.management.CreateFeatureclass( out_path=out_dir, out_name=out_base, geometry_type="POLYGON", template=input_fc, spatial_reference=sr ) print(f"Created: {output_fc}") # --- Processing --- cursor_fields = ["SHAPE@"] + fields with arcpy.da.InsertCursor(output_fc, cursor_fields) as i_cursor: with arcpy.da.SearchCursor(input_fc, cursor_fields) as s_cursor: for row in s_cursor: geom = row[0] if geom: buff = geom.buffer(buffer_dist) mask_geom = buff.difference(geom) i_cursor.insertRow((mask_geom,) + row[1:]) # --- Symbology (CIM) --- aprx = arcpy.mp.ArcGISProject("CURRENT") m = aprx.activeMap # Manually add the layer so we can grab the object new_lyr = m.addDataFromPath(output_fc) cim = new_lyr.getDefinition('V3') # 25% Opaque = 75% Transparent grey_fill = [128, 128, 128, 25] # Iterate through symbol layers to update fill and disable stroke for sl in cim.renderer.symbol.symbol.symbolLayers: if isinstance(sl, arcpy.cim.CIMSolidFill): sl.color.values = grey_fill if isinstance(sl, arcpy.cim.CIMSolidStroke): sl.enable = False new_lyr.setDefinition(cim) print(f"Done. Layer '{out_base}' added.") # Example Call: #create_reverse_mask("lightofdaypolygon", "reversemask", 100000)