Unwanted transparency when coloring by dimension

[henrikalmen]

Line chart with "Area" style. Year on x-axis, a sum-measure on y-axis and one dimension (with four different values) as Area. 

When I set the colors to "by dimension" (left part of the image), the colors are vague because there is an added transparency to the colors that are not defined in the theme. 

If I color by expression (right part of the image) and use the same color definitions as those used in the left image, I do get the more solid colors that I want, but in this mode it's not possible to show the legend description.

Why, oh why, is there an added transparency to the colors when coloring by dimension?? I need the legend AND the darker colors. Is this a bug, or why is this a feature?

Qlik Sense Enterprise on Windows (on-prem), version May 2024.

[nevopotokcloudinary · Accepted solution]

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You're absolutely right — this is not controlled by the theme but is intentional behavior in Qlik Sense:
When using “Color by dimension” on an area-style line chart, Qlik applies transparency to all areas except the one on top, to help visualize overlaps between areas.

This is not a bug, but a design choice by Qlik to improve visibility of layered data. Unfortunately, it’s not currently user-configurable, which can be frustrating when you want strong solid colors and the legend.

Workarounds:

1. Color by expression (as you did) using full-opacity colors – but yes, you lose auto-legend.

2. Custom legend workaround:

   • Add a separate text object or KPI with a colored square and label per dimension.

   • Or use an extension (like Vizlib, if available to you) that allows better control over color and legends.

Recommendation:

Please consider submitting this as a feature request on Qlik Ideation. A toggle to control transparency in area charts would be very useful!

[henrikalmen]

Thanks, I definitely will submit an idea for this. I'll accept your answer as the "solution" to my question, even though I don't fully understand this design choice by Qlik. I mean, if it is like you say - a design choice to enable visibility for overlapping values - it's also strange that this behaviour only occurrs whn coloring by dimension and not when using an expression. It should be a qlik developer choice in both scenarios.

[henrikalmen · Accepted solution]

Here is the idea in the ideation area, please vote for it: https://ideation.qlik.com/app/#/case/481130?currentProductId=9da99bc1-0dfb-4471-8e12-d23685578c43&cp... 

[nevopotokcloudinary]

Thanks for sharing @henrikalmen , just vote

[henrikalmen]

I ended up using layout container and a text object placed on top of the chart within the container. In this case I can live with always showing all four dimensions in the legend, even if not all of them are available in the current selection, but I'm thinking that could have been handled as well adding data measures to the text box with conditional texts instead of static texts.