jQuery Plugin to add a darkening gradient over a background image, to achieve better readabillity with enhanced contrast on superimposed text.

But, you can do so much more with it ...

Use this on elements with the image set as background-image. Something like this:

<div style="background-image: url("[PATH-TO-IMG]")"></div>

And then:

$('div').darkener();

It takes an object, the defaults:

{
	align: 'top',
	size: '50%',
	colorStart: 'rgba(0,0,0,0)',
	colorEnd: 'rgba(0,0,0,0.8)',
	opacity: '1',
	mixBlendMode: 'normal'
}

All option values are css values.

• align: Defines from what side the overlay stretches. Use top, left, right, bottom. Any other value defaults to top.
• size: Defines how much of the area is covered.
• colorStart: Color to start with.
• colorEnd: Color on the aligned side.
• opacity: The overall opacity.
• mixBlendMode: How it blends with the image. (=CSS's mix-blend-mode)

"By the time of this wrighting, this last option, mixBlendMode, will be ignored by MSIE and Edge as expected. At least until they have abandoned their own crappy work and made Edge a fork of Chrome."

Use chaining like this:

$(div).darkener({align:'top'}).darkener({align:'bottom'});

Play around with the colorStart and colorEnd options. Try any css color value like HEX or even named colors. It's quite easy to 'convert' this darkener into a ligthener or a colorer or a whateverer ;]