Coloring areas with flexibility

I had an interesting challenge recently at one of the print shops I freelance at.

The client provided an PDF file of some lots for sale. They wanted to use it in their sales materials to indicated the status of specific lots.

Since the lots themselves were about a half millions dollars each, it was important that communication was clear. Yep – that's the price for the dirt only – welcome to Calgary. :-P

I exported the PDF out of Acrobat as a high-resolution monochrome bitmap. At 600 DPI, this maintained the clarity of the lettering quite well since the original PDF dimensions were large.

For coloring, I'd initially thought about painting the lots with Photo-PAINT using subtract or multiply merge modes.

I opted to draw the perimeter of the lots & road using this technique. After 8 years of using CorelDRAW, I'd learned something that totally changed my career. This technique is it.

I created a few lines as trimming tools split up the sections further. It went reasonably quickly, since splitting up a block of lots often could use the same line as a trimming tool.

Then I filled each lot with a color and ensured each piece was partially transparent and set to Multiply merge mode through the Interactive Transparency tool's Property Bar options.

I now have the flexibility for 2 important things:

1. The ability to export to a color bitmap at any practical dimension without loss. All color components are vector shapes.

2. Changing the status of lots is easy: Press and hold Shift. Right-click on the mouse and drag & drop from one shape to another. The shape you drop on will inherit the color from the first shape.

After seeing the result, the client ordered double the amount of copies they originally wanted.