[FR] Overlay pages in color

[Mathew]

The tool Overlay Pages is the only way I can see to compare pages between two sets of line drawings. Unfortunately it currently has two limitations:

1. The option "Appearance" shows a scale factor. In the attached two pdf files, the pages are the same size, yet unless I select "scale relative to target" it comes up with some weird stretching on the overlay document. Seems like PXE is confused about one of the document page rotations(?)
2. The only option for making contrast between the overlay and the original is with opacity. Could there be an option to colorize it?

Currently, overlayed drawings would look like this - very difficult to see what is new:

image.png

My request is that we could set a color, so the overlay could look something like this:

image(1).png

Doc 1.pdf

Doc 2.pdf

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Mathew

At the moment, the only way to accomplish a colorization for overlay comparison purposes, would be to select all content in the "base" file, and manually change the stroke/fill colors as needed before overlaying the secondary file.

Here is a sample where I have done the following:
1. open Doc 1 - Choose "Edit objects > all"
2. Drag selection area around page - Change "stroke color" to blue
3. Switch to "Edit ojbects > Text" - Reselect text content
4. change "fill color" to blue as well
5. Overlay Doc 2

Blue-then-overlay.pdf

As for the scaling issue, I see what you mean, I will bring this up to the team for review, it certainly should not be "squishing" the content like this, good catch!

Kind regards,

[Mathew]

Yes, that's the approach I currently use. Depending on the objects, it works OK, although it has problems, such as:

• sometimes CAD files get output with white rectangles behind text to mask the content behind. When changing line color, this rectangle gets a colored outline and a diagonal line through it.
• There's also no way to just change the white background to transparent, without changing all background colors
• It requires making changes to an overlay page before overlaying it (ie can't adjust the colors on the fly while comparing multiple overlayed drawings)

So unfortunately this is a notch in Bluebeam's belt making it (currently) better for use with technical drawings. Overlaying as a way of comparing drawings is a very common task in my field. The drawings may not even be the same size, or have exactly the same origin point on the page, so ideally overlays should be able to move and scale relative to one another, more like stamps. One does not have an ability to control how other firms have output the drawing to pdf, so we need to work with what we receive.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi, Mathew

you and many others have expressed a desire for this over the years. I have been granted permission to create a "long term" feature request.

RT#6871: Feature Request :: Editor :: Overlay pages in colour

There is definitely no ETA currently, we will have to see how things pan out.

[Vasyl - PDF-XChange]

Just for devs, related to this subject:

viewtopic.php?t=42351

[Sir_Stig]

Just commenting to add that this is something that would be useful to my company, and also the ability to use the snapshot tool to take a snapshot and use the built in editor to default palette swap black to red. I've found a way to do this using an external photo editor, but I feel like this should be strongly considered as a core feature. Any engineering company will be using this feature, especially if you are using a tablet for markups and don't have the buttons available to make modifying the pdf directly easier.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, Sir_Stig

Thank you for the support here, I have added a note to the ticket, but as before this is a long term ticket, and is not something we can promise will come anytime soon. It is very likely to be more than a year away.

Kind regards,

[Vasyl - PDF-XChange]

Hi Sir_Stig.

built in editor to default palette swap black to red

Can you explain this a little? Why do you need this as an engineer? Why only black->red? What about other colors?

Cheers.

[HurriBolt]

As an engineer, we look at many drawings. More specifically, we look at many versions of the same drawings with slight or subtle changes. The common file format for sharing, review, and saving drawings is the PDF format. Sometimes, we compare single page drawings and other times we compare multi page drawings. Some PDF files are made of objects (which can be easily modified) and others are made of a single image that represents the objects. The best way to visually compare any PDF is to first convert that PDF to an image, and then assign a color (red, cyan, or any chosen color) to each PDF for an overlay comparison. If these PDFs can be merged into a single document and each PDF in its own layer, then the comparison can be done by turning on/off each layer.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, HurriBolt

Thank you for the confirmation there. I have passed this along to Vasyl, but I also have some good news for you!

I now have confirmation that this is seeing active development at the moment. I cannot promise when just yet, and I don't believe it is likely to be in any of the next handful of builds, but with it seeing more development time, it is likely to come along relatively soon.

Kind regards,

[fpensa]

Hey, this is quite an old thread, but I wonder if this feature ever came out from development...

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, fpensa

Yes, this has been completes a while ago. Simply use the overlay pages function, and choose a color for the original and and color for the overlay along with a "blend mode" of Multiply, like so:

image.png

In my example, I have selected two similar pages from a document to compare, but with Red and blue selected, I can see at a glance that any "black" content is unchanged, while anything that is red or blue is from one of the two source files.

Kind regards,