Preserved Topic: newspaper man needs help

Greetings o' gurus of Photoshop. I work at a small newspaper with limited resources for training, so I turn to you with any help you might have. First and foremost, I've been trying to erase background to transparency, to put just the cutout in the paper. However, I can never export as a photoshop.eps unless I flatten image. When I flatten image, it erases the transparency and makes it a white background. This is driving me crazy!! Can somebody help? Todd

Just out of curiosity, why *.eps?

That's the format our printer recognizes when we print to film. From there, it's burned to plate. It would be so much easier if we could just do it otherwise, but I can't at this point :-(
Todd

Yah, that's a common problem with people using PhotoShop for print work.

PhotoShop has a pen tool, which I hope your familar with from other desktop publishing applications seeing you work in the print industry.

Anyways, you need to set up clipping paths (using the pen tool) that you can export the transperancy to other applications. Just consult the help files hunting around for the term "Clipping Path" and you should be able to work it out from there. However, that only really works if your after solid edge transparencies. If you want full 8 bit alpha transparency control (alpha masks of 24 bit images) of your bitmap images in other applications then your probably fat outa luck.

Anyways, if you have any problems come back and let us know where things arr going wrong and what the other applications your woking with are.... Hope I could help.

I'll try the clipping pen, alhtough I've never used it before. I've always just used the eraser tool to cut backgrounds and then combine pics. That's why I'm so puzzled as to why I can cut the background, but not just export the clipping. That's driving me crazy, but thanks for your advice. I'll try that immediately. - Todd

It's because PostScript, the language of RIPs and image setters, doesn't support transparency.

The only reliable way to bring in an image into a page layout program minus its background is with a clipping path. You first need a path. There are several ways to do this: the pen tool is one (which will be tough if you're not used to it and needing to produce work under pressure); another is to make a path from a selection. If you have already dropped the background to transparent in Pthotoshop, try command or control clicking on the layer icon to select that layer's opaque pixels. then in the path palette you can turn that selection into a path. Might be sorta ragged, but for newspaper that might be okay. Once you have a path (must be named by the way in order to be saved with the file - double click the name Photoshop gives it and type in a new name), that path has to be defined as a clipping path - do so from the fly-out menu top right of the path palette. Save the file as .eps and import into page layout software. That'll get you started anyway. The pen is mighty, but mighty confusing at first.

Dang - wish the gurusnetwork site was up reliably. I still can't get to it myself. Once that site is back up there's a little tutorial on the pen tool you might find helpful.

Oh - woops - welcome to the Asylum!


[This message has been edited by Steve (edited 08-22-2002).]

Looks like my erratic GN connection is back for the moment and so I'll help Steve out there - the tutorial he was referring to is:
www.gurusnetwork.com/tutorials/photoshop/pen1intro.html

Great tutorial (can't remember who wrote it at the moment though ) - check out the movies as you can't beat that kind of visual help

___________________
Emps

FAQs: Emperor

Arrr.... Thanks Steve! I was hoping you'd catch this one and clarify things for me.

Hey everybody, thanks so much for the help ... I'll lick this daggone thing yet!!! Once again, thanks!

There's 2 plug-ins for photoshop that make your tasks easier, "ELIMINATE WHITE" & "ELIMINATE BLACK".
These tools eliminate white/black background into transparency instantly.
Another option is more expensive but deserve.
They are "Procreate(Corel) KnockOut 1.5 / 2.0". I use these tools for cutting out images that can't easily be cut out elsewhere. Please tapping to the URL as follow for more information. http://www.procreate.com/go/knockout/ http://www.unleash.com/oneuser/part004-knockout.html

enjoy it!

There is another method.

I use InDesign to prepare the layout of my printed works and this nice Adobe program is able to import directly the PSD file.
This mean that is able to recognize both the clipping path and the alpha channel (the checked background that in Photoshop means 'transparency').

If this is not enough is able to create a clipping mask from any file avoiding the white background with a tolerance that the operator can set.

If you use Xpress or PageMaker to prepare the lay-out of your newspaper ... trow them and pass to InDesign. It is far far better !