Improvements to Recolor Pages tool

[Mathew]

The Recolor Pages tool is a fantastic addition and I use it a lot for overlays. I have a couple of requests to make it even better:

1. When selecting the "From:" color, it makes more sense to have the option "Add Custom Color" and "Add Colors from Page" here than on the right side, because it actually doesn't make sense to replace a color that doesn't exist on the page(s) anyway
   image.png
2. Object type "Stamp" does not appear to be included. My most frequent need is to change colors inside stamps that I'm using as overlays. Stamps work much better as overlays because they can be scaled and moved to align properly. I'd like the option to be able to change colors in a selected stamp, not necessarily in a whole page. My current workaround is to make a new document with the information I need in the stamp, set the colors there, then copy content and paste as stamp -- lots of steps. The data and functionality is already here for adjusting stamp colors - just not available to users yet. And, yes, I understand that if a stamp has been placed multiple times, changing the colors would affect all of them: That could be worked around, but may be a beneficial feature, too.

Thank you.

[Sean - PDF-XChange]

Hi mathew,

I'm not sure I follow your first point - the 'Add Color' option is on the "To" side in the UI:

image.png

which implies that the color chosen will be a color that is already present in the document.

Stamps are not included in the 'Object Type' dropdown menu because they are classified as line art/comments. It's not possible to edit them separately from the rest of the document using this feature, but you can edit them via the custom stamps editor if they're custom stamps. If you're talking about default stamps, it's necessary to flatten them first, and then edit them as you would normal content:

image(1).png

You can then save and use them as a custom stamp as desired.

Kind regards,

[Mathew]

Hi Sean,

I've tried to clarify my point 1 in the image below:

image.png

For my point 2, I'm taking a plan by another consultant and overlaying it on my plan as a stamp. The reason I use a stamp is that their plan does not exactly align with mine on the sheet. I have to use the recolor tool on the other consultant's drawing before I make a stamp (I've made it orange, green, blue):

image(1).png

I cannot just flatten this stamp to change the colors, because then I'll be changing the colors in my drawing. I only want to mess with the colors in the stamp as needed so I can see better the contrast.

[Sean - PDF-XChange]

Hi Mathew,

Okay thanks - I have asked the development team for some input on your first issue. Regarding the second one, can you please clarify why you are overlaying the content as a stamp, and not simply using the Overlay Pages tool instead? The reason you're having difficulty with this is because it's not straightforward to edit stamps once they have been added to documents. If you could instead add the desired content as content items, you would be able to edit it in the Content Pane, which would make life much easier.

Kind regards,

[Mathew]

Regarding the second one, can you please clarify why you are overlaying the content as a stamp, and not simply using the Overlay Pages tool instead?

I'm working with plans and sections in Architectural drawings. There are multiple reasons that the Overlay Pages tool won't work for me -- off the top of my head (there are probably other scenarios):

• Generally the plans from the different consultants will not necessarily line up on each page, so if I just overlay using the overlay tool, the plans will be offset from each other.
• The plans may not even be at the same scale, so then one of them would need to be scaled to match.
• I may only need to overlay a portion of another drawing to figure out the relationship in a specific area.
• Sometimes I'm overlaying a plan onto a detail, section or elevation so that I can compare where things are.

In all of these, if I use a stamp to overlay, I can move it around, scale it or delete it as a single object very easily. With the Select Page Region tool, Copy and Paste as Stamp it's now very easy to get portions of pages to overlay. The only missing piece is the ability to change the line colors in that stamp so that it contrasts.

The overlay pages tool is just too rigid to work for this - I've found the main use for that tool is to compare different generations of the same page.

[Sean - PDF-XChange]

Hi Matthew,

Okay, thanks. Have you considered scaling the documents before stamp/overlay creation?

Regarding your other issue, the development team got back to me on it and explained that "Add Custom Color" exists because "Add Existing Colors" doesn't look into raster pictures, because it's possible that there could be millions of different colors located there, which of course would not be practical.

Kind regards,

[Mathew]

Sorry Sean I may not be clear: I’m not working with raster images. These are all vector based.

For item 1 what I’m asking for is to be able to pick one of the colors that are in the pdf for the “from” drop down. I can do it by adding a new row from the drop down on the right (“add colors”) and then delete the previous row, but it just makes more sense to just pick the color directly.

The current setup assumes I want to pick a custom color for the “from” side and doesn’t give the option to pick from colors in the page.

[Sean - PDF-XChange]

Hi again Mathew,

Thanks - I've asked the dev team again and will get back to you here in due course.

[Sean - PDF-XChange]

Update: the dev team have approved a feature request for this change in the software, and I've added it to the queue.

Kind regards,