Preserved Topic: Help! TIFF pictures with transparent background have white one in Quark???

Hello All,

I am new on this forum... Can anyone please help me?

I have made some images in PhotoShop 6.01 (CMYK, 300 ppi, transparent background, saved as TIFF - the print studio can use only TIFF - with "save transparency" checked) for a Quark publication. But then, when I place those pictures into a Quark document with a colored background, they appear there all of a sudden with a white background around them (yes, picture frame color set to "None" in Quark) ... Whatever I tried... I suspect, I do something wrong in PhotoShop... If so, what is it? How can I preserve a transparent background of my PS pictures in a Quark document using TIFF format?

Lots of thanks for all and any help in advance!

Valery

PS: Please be gentle on me with PS lingo - I am an absolute novice. Thanks!

Welcome Valery.

I am not 100% with this , but I believe that you have to create a 'Clipping path' in Photoshop that defines the area of transparency when exported/imported into such progs as Quark etc.

Steve? DG?

vogonpoet is quite right. This one foxed me for months after I was dropped into my job at the deep end with little knowledge of photoshop. A closed clipping path tightly rendered around the image will indeed preserve a transparant background. you can also make clipping path 'holes' within the main picture to produce further transparent patches on your image

~We're not here for long, we're here for fun~

Hmm...this topic has popped up three times...so I'm thinking it's a bit superfluous here.

Someone want to move it?



[This message has been edited by DarkGarden (edited 02-08-2002).]

Indesign 2.0

[This message has been edited by PunisherOlsen (edited 02-08-2002).]

Thank you so much, vogonpoet and Morph, for your quick replies!

Now... if I only knew how I can make a "closed clipping path tightly rendered around the image" to preserve a transparant background... Please be so kind, tell me how I can do it. I am really new to PhotoShop...

Loads of thanks in advance!

Valery

Often times you can make a selection of your ...uh...selection (shut up..I just woke up...just shut the f#$k up) by doing the old Ctrl key+Click method and then convert the selection to a clipping path. This will give you a rough path for your transparency...then go in and tweak your bezier curves by hand (as it were).

Steve?

Jeni?

Use your pen tool to draw around your image until the path is closed

Go to paths pallette and and double click the path name that you have just created (it will be called path1)

now give it a new name in the pop up box or leave it as path1

Still in the paths pallette, click the arrow on the right and go down to clipping path

in the pop up box scroll down to the name of your path (ie path1) and click ok

make sure the image is flattened and save as tiff

~We're not here for long, we're here for fun~

[This message has been edited by Morph (edited 02-08-2002).]

I don't have the time or patience to go through how to draw a clipping path right now. Read in your manual about the pen/path tools...that will help you understand better.

Just wanted to add that once you place your image (with clipping path) in Quark, you can turn on and off the clipping path and select a different one all from quark 4.x....All provided you are not using PS 6.0...You have to have 6.0.1 for tiff clipping paths to work in Quark. It was bug in 6.0.

Many thanks to you all for your friendly and detailed instructions!

I will try it all out and report back to you - hopefully, with preserved transparency in my Quark documents :-)

Lots of thanks to all of you again!

See you later...

Valery

PS: Forgot to ask something else... Just an idea... What if I save my PS-images in EPS format, will they then have a transparent background when printed from Quark? If yes, could it be an alternative equal to creating a clipping path as you described above? Or is this a completely diffetent pair of shoes?

Thanks!

Sorry to say, PostScript doesn't understand transparency the way Photoshop uses it. Or layers for that matter. Saving a file with a "transparent background" means layers. When you flatten it (to get a tiff) - no more layers, and no more transparency. That's just how PostScript works. (At least as far as I know)

I'm no Quark expert, but since you cross posted this question in print graphic and Photoshop you have gotten advise about alpha channels and clipping paths. There's a pen tool tutorial at the GurusNetwork here, but it's a lot to wade through if you're in a hurry. Do you know how to save an alpha channel? Do you know how to turn a selection into a path? Again, it's a lot to wade through, but Warjournal wrote a nice tutorial here that, among lots of other things, deals with turning a selection into a path. Once it's saved as a path, that path must be defined as a special kind of path - a clipping path.

Cant say I've tried a clipping path on an eps and I don't have quark on this machine but hey, why don't you try it val

~We're not here for long, we're here for fun~

Just remember that once you've imported the EPS into Quark, you want to select it with the Object tool, hit Ctrl-M for Modify, find the Clipping Path tab, and make sure the correct path is selected. It'll help you out if you give the clipping path a logical name back on the Photoshop side of the fence.

Anyway, the transparency will show up onscreen in Quark once you've done it correctly.

Thanks a million to you all - Steve, Morph and Perfect Thunder - for your valuable advice! I sincerely appreciate your kind help!

Steve, I will rush to the site you pinted me to to learn how to save an alpha channel and also how to turn a selection into a path (a clipping path) - I somehow sense that this will indeed help me solve my problem.

Morph, I tried saving my images as EPS and then importing them into Quark: same old white background there all the same. So I think saving a clipping path will be inevitable anyway - EPS or not.

Perfect Thunder, thank you your tip on handling an imported EPS and its clipping path - it is very helpful!

Thanks to you all again and again!

Valery


~ No sense being pessimistic, it probably wouldn't work anyway. ~