You can force the use of a black&white output using skinparam monochrome true command.
@startuml
skinparam monochrome true
actor User
participant "First Class" as A
participant "Second Class" as B
participant "Last Class" as C
User -> A: DoWork
activate A
A -> B: Create Request
activate B
B -> C: DoWork
activate C
C --> B: WorkDone
destroy C
B --> A: Request Created
deactivate B
A --> User: Done
deactivate A
@enduml
Shadowing
You can disable the shadowing using the skinparam shadowing false command.
@startuml
left to right direction
skinparam shadowing<<no_shadow>> false
skinparam shadowing<<with_shadow>> true
actor User
(Glowing use case) <<with_shadow>> as guc
(Flat use case) <<no_shadow>> as fuc
User -- guc
User -- fuc
@enduml
Reverse colors
You can force the use of a black&white output using skinparam monochrome reverse command. This can be useful for black background environment.
@startuml
skinparam monochrome reverse
actor User
participant "First Class" as A
participant "Second Class" as B
participant "Last Class" as C
User -> A: DoWork
activate A
A -> B: Create Request
activate B
B -> C: DoWork
activate C
C --> B: WorkDone
destroy C
B --> A: Request Created
deactivate B
A --> User: Done
deactivate A
@enduml
transparent can only be used for background of the image.
Font color, name and size
You can change the font for the drawing using xxxFontColor, xxxFontSize and xxxFontName parameters. Example:
skinparam classFontColor red
skinparam classFontSize 10
skinparam classFontName Aapex
You can also change the default font for all fonts using skinparam defaultFontName. Example:
skinparam defaultFontName Aapex
Please note the fontname is highly system dependent, so do not over use it, if you look for portability. Helvetica and Courier should be available on all system. A lot of parameters are available. You can list them using the following command:
java -jar plantuml.jar -language
Text Alignment
Text alignment can be set up to left, right or center. You can also use direction or reverseDirection values for sequenceMessageAlign which align text depending on arrow direction.
Param name
Default value
Comment
sequenceMessageAlign
left
Used for messages in sequence diagrams
sequenceReferenceAlign
center
Used for ref over in sequence diagrams
@startuml
skinparam sequenceMessageAlign center
Alice -> Bob : Hi
Alice -> Bob : This is very long
@enduml
Examples
@startuml
skinparam backgroundColor #EEEBDC
skinparam handwritten true
skinparam sequence {
ArrowColor DeepSkyBlue
ActorBorderColor DeepSkyBlue
LifeLineBorderColor blue
LifeLineBackgroundColor #A9DCDF
ParticipantBorderColor DeepSkyBlue
ParticipantBackgroundColor DodgerBlue
ParticipantFontName Impact
ParticipantFontSize 17
ParticipantFontColor #A9DCDF
ActorBackgroundColor aqua
ActorFontColor DeepSkyBlue
ActorFontSize 17
ActorFontName Aapex
}
actor User
participant "First Class" as A
participant "Second Class" as B
participant "Last Class" as C
User -> A: DoWork
activate A
A -> B: Create Request
activate B
B -> C: DoWork
activate C
C --> B: WorkDone
destroy C
B --> A: Request Created
deactivate B
A --> User: Done
deactivate A
@enduml
@startuml
skinparam handwritten true
skinparam actor {
BorderColor black
FontName Courier
BackgroundColor<< Human >> Gold
}
skinparam usecase {
BackgroundColor DarkSeaGreen
BorderColor DarkSlateGray
BackgroundColor<< Main >> YellowGreen
BorderColor<< Main >> YellowGreen
ArrowColor Olive
}
User << Human >>
:Main Database: as MySql << Application >>
(Start) << One Shot >>
(Use the application) as (Use) << Main >>
User -> (Start)
User --> (Use)
MySql --> (Use)
@enduml
Since the documentation is not always up to date, you can have the complete list of parameters using this command:
java -jar plantuml.jar -language
Or you can generate a "diagram" with a list of all the skinparam parameters using help skinparams. That will give you the following result, from this page (code of this command):