Masking areas of interest
This guide will show you:
- What are masks used for
- How to create and remove a mask
- How to use the interactive legend
The Masking tool lets you focus on a specific area of the map by removing data from all the surrounding areas. Let’s say you’re interested only in the states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and South Carolina. Visualizing data for the entire United States might make your visualization feel cluttered and end up overshadowing the point you’re trying to make. Our masking tool was designed to solve that particular problem, as the data shown will be only inside the masked area and the rest will be grayed out.
Creating a mask
- In the Change data menu, click the More options icon
and select Mask map data. - In the Masking tool panel, select the geography level you wish to use to create your mask. You may also choose to include sub-geographies. These will show up as we zoom into the map. If none of the sub-geographies are checked, you will only see the masked states.
and select Mask map data.There are six selection tools available in the masking tool: 
point selection, 
rectangle selection, 
circle selection, 
polygon selection, 
line selection tool, and 
layers selection tool.
Learn more about our selection toolbox in this short guide.
- Click the point selection tool to select or deselect one geography at a time by clicking on it. In our case, we’ll click Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and South Carolina.
- When finished, click Done.
Removing a mask
To remove a mask, click the X symbol on the mask button in the upper right corner of the application.
To edit your currently masked areas of interest, click the 