45. A method to blend graphical objects, comprising: obtaining a page description language representation of graphical objects, each graphical object having transparency characteristics and color characteristics, the graphical objects being associated with an input page; tiling an output page corresponding to the input page, each tile having a flag initially set to false; setting a tile flag to true if any transparent graphical object intersects the tile; rasterizing all opaque graphical objects; removing a tile from the output page if its flag is false; converting a first graphical object into a first planar map, the first planar map having regions associated with the first graphical object; converting a second graphical object into a second planar map, the second planar map having regions associated with the second graphical object; combining the first and second planar maps, the combined planar map having regions; tagging a region in the combined planar map to indicate which graphical objects are associated with the region; and assigning a color to the tagged region as a function of the transparency characteristics and color characteristics of the graphical objects associated with the tagged region language.
46. The method of claim 45 further comprising sorting the planar map regions of the combined planar map into a print order.