I have several shows where I have to indicate on the charts with arrows and lines where people need to go and what has to happen in what direction. I have gotten better at the text descriptions for the instructors, but since some of my clients pass out the charts to the members, sometimes it's easier for them to see it rather than read my wordy descriptions.
That being said, with the ability to change the colors/(opacity) of anything regarding the grid design - markers, primary, secondary, et al - I was wondering if we could also have that option to make any arrows we draw look slightly 'grey-er' or less black.
This is where it becomes an issue of clarity, because if the grid is black and white with shades of grey, what are the chances the arrows will end up being less clear? Well, I have found that when some of the sets I draw have tighter intervals and they have all of the number/labels being shown with their little 'arm' coming off the dot or symbol (connecting the label to the position) it tends to look very cluttered and too much 'black' mess on the screen. Since there's no way to change the position labels or arrows to a color other than black, I wondered if it would be possibly to look into incorporating something like that into a future update.
I have experimented with and printed out charts with the positions being a grey-er color, unchecking the box to "print all performers black" and it helps but the wrong object is less dominant. I think the dots should be the most dominant, followed by the labels and finally the arrows or even text boxes. If I had the ability to adjust those shades of black/grey, I would definitely keep the performers/dots as black, the labels/arms coming off those dots as a black-grey color and any arrows or text boxes as a medium-light grey.
Here is a sample of how it prints out normally:
And here is a representation of what I am talking about:
* It'll probably be easiest to open them up in new tabs and click back and forth between each to see the difference between the two.
It's VERY subtle with the color change or opacity, but it seems to clean it up just enough to make the right info pop out for those teaching or viewing it to see. In my edited example, I layered each element and modified it as follows:
field grid: opacity 100%
positions/dots: 100%
text box (white background): opacity 90%
text box text: opacity 100%
position labels: opacity 75%
arrows and text box frames: opacity 55%
I don't think that everyone will want to jump on the opportunity to do something like this, as it would seem to me that it may be fine as is and an added extra step or two may be a bit too much... but if it were an option you could change in the "Application Options" and adjust certain colors or opacity regarding what ends up on the print out, I think that could be something that some designers and instructors/directors would find very helpful in addition to everything the program already does very well.