Highlighting columns in figure

I have made a figure showing the values of a matrix by relative colorvalues [have made use of imagesc(matrix)]. I would like two highlight two colums (say 7 and 19) by making them lighter.

As such the final result will be a two highlighted vertical bands in the figure.

Any sugestions as to how I can do this?

Answer 1

[Desiree]

You can use property AlphaData to make certain columns transparent:

h = imagesc(rand(10));

ad = ones(10); ad(:,2) = 0.5; ad(:,7) = 0.5;

set(h,'AlphaData',ad)

[Athos]

Thank you, that worked great.

However, I have a small question. If I use axis, they seem to be mirrored (together with the labels) by this method. How could I fix this?

[Athos]

Nevermind, the problem went away when I saved the figure.