How to get labels from other layers to stop showing through a global background?

[JHolbrook]

I'm working with national weather data and river information and have a global background in place with specific states excluded from the darkening effect of the global background.  

Everything works well, except that some labels ignore the darkening effect of the global background layer and seem to ignore the layer order sitting on top of everything else.  

Is there a setting somewhere that I can change this?  

[BernSzukalski]

Without a URL to your map I'm only guessing... But it seems to me that you might be using a basemap with a reference layer. Some have these, some don't. The reference layer will always be on top of everything else in your map, and as a separate later is not subject to the same layer effects as you may have applied to other layers.

See your basemap settings:

If you have a reference layer you can get rid of it, or add it to your basemap layers. Also, when applying blending effects, check out groups as groups "encapsulate" the effect within the layers that are in the group.

You can always create your own custom basemap leveraging various reference and other layers from Living Atlas and use these within your map, or make a new map with the desired reference layer configurations and add it to your custom basemap gallery (requires admin privileges).

[JHolbrook]

Bern, Thank you for the response!

I'm sorry I can't share the map, I'm part of a large organization that doesn't freely grant publishing rights, and when I tried to upload a screenshot, it seems that the work network doesn't like that either.  

I can upload it to imgur though:  

https://imgur.com/OCBlgRk

The map is using the world ocean base, and while it came with the world ocean reference, I'd disabled that to limit the map to more specific layers, and instead added the Esri Hydro Reference Overlay to the layers of my map.

I've managed to filter out most of the other labels by using filters to remove labels that are not in any of our selected states.  However, with this particular layer, I want the labels to still exist outside of the focused area, just be faded behind the layer mask until you toggle off the focus layer.  

Even with the labeled layer being moved to the very bottom of the layer list, and the focus overlay being moved to the top, the labels from that layer continue to show through.

[BernSzukalski]

Thanks for the image, I understand what you are trying to do though not quite sure how to go about doing it. I'm thinking it's going to take some experimentation... I'll see if I can find some time later today to come up with a similar map to your yours to experiment.

[BernSzukalski · Accepted solution]

I took a quick look, hoping to come up with a solution based on Destination In blending and duplicate layers that I used to create this map:

https://onlinelabs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=398294b197dc4daf814ce9061950eae7

That map was created using this technique:

https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/mapping/local-focus/#blen4

However, it seems that labels behave very much like reference layers - they are always on top, and all you can do is turn them off or on. Just as you have found out...

I've not found a way to hide or darken them using others layers, blending, or anything else that comes to mind. And there is the issue that labels can cross any kind of boundaries (states in your case) that you want to use to hide them.

If it is only the stations/labels along the selected state boundaries you want to show, then you could apply a spatial filter (using analysis) to only show those stations adjacent to your states of interest. Or perhaps you've got the attributes along with your stations that would allow you to filter for specific states.

Let's see if others might have a better suggestion.

[JHolbrook]

Thanks Bern, this might be the best I can do.  I'll try this out.