placing photos

[tomv]

I don't know much about In Design, but a co worker placing my photos into a book doesn't know how to place a photo including the background into a layout when I've done a clipping path for an object in the photo. She is saying that the object in the clipping path goes into the layout without the background (which we want also in the layout) and photos without the clipping path work fine, including the background. I assume there's a way to place with & a way to place without background? All files are tiff files, and a couple of the images had the stacking order wrong (which I thought would be the problem), but she is having a problem with the ones that have the stacking order correct also.

[Lukas Engqvist]

In Indesign you can choose to use a clipingpath or set to none.
Either after placement (object>clipping path>options...), or while placing (check show options, or hold shift down while placing).

Then please format your messages for clarity, I do not quite understand what you want to say. What do you mean by stacking order? Of layers or of paths? Or is it something else?

[tomv]

thanks for the information, i'll pass that along & see if that helps the problem.
sorry for the confusion in terms, resulting from my research i thought stacking order was a standard term for the icons or symbols chosen when creating a path (add to path/subtract from path/intersect path/excludeoverlapping path areas) when using the Pen tool. Choosing the left symbol (add to path) for the outer path drawn for an object correctly defines the path as the outside of an object in an image. is there another set of terms to use?

[Lukas Engqvist]

A clipping path can't be made up of different paths, though you can in Indesign choose what path you wish to be your clipping path.

I suppose you could call it stacking order of sub-paths if you mean what subpath is over another. If the paths add or subtract I would not call the stacking order but how sub paths are combined (have not seen a term for it that I can remember but it is essentially the pathfinder of illustrator and InDesign). How do you mean the stacking order to be wrong?

[tomv]

by stacking order wrong, i mean for example to draw a path for a doughnut, the far left icon or symbol needs to be highlighted for the outer path, then the icon or symbol to the right of that needs to be hightlighted when drawing the path for the hole in the center., then when changing the path to a selection, the doughnut is selected without the hole and can be pasted onto a layer of it's own. if the outer path is drawn with the second icon or symbol hightlighted, the path does not function properly as a path or as a selection.

[Lukas Engqvist]

I guess I learned photoshop too long ago, when the paths were more primitive, and stick to vectors in illustrator, where you can see what order you draw objects.
Yes that kind of path stuff would disturb the appearance. And making a selection of a path is a good way to see what you will get if you use that path as a clipping path.

If you want to have optional clipping paths they will have to be named though. And photoshop can only have one default clipping path per image. If no clipping path is set, then the image will by default place with no clipping path.

Any named path can be accessed in InDesign as a cliping path.
There is also detect edges and create form alpha chennel.

[micke]

I am curious, Tom. Why are you making a clipping path in your Photoshop image if you don't want to silhouette part of the image? I always and only use clipping paths in Photoshop when I want to drop out the background in InD or QXP. If I want the background to show, why would I want a clipping path?

micke

[GuyB]

And why use a clipping path ? Just make the backround transparent in Photoshop : much simpler.

[tomv]

I shoot a lot of furniture in a warehouse and the images need to have a white bgnd with the real shadows. The white seamless paper gets real dirty when shooting 100 pieces/day. so to clean up the background and make sure it's a neutral color and sometimes to add more white background and shadows I draw clipping path of the furniture, change to selection & paste furniture on another layer, run dust & scratches on the background, change saturation to zero, touchup & paint white all but shadows, flatten, and convert to cmyk - all this is mostly done with actions except the painting.

[micke]

Tom, I see what you are doing (nice job, I must say), but I don't see why you convert the saved path to a clipping path. InDesign wants to use the clipping path to knock out the bkgd, unless you change the default preference.

Why not just use the path in Ps as a selection, invert selection, do your revisions, and you still have the image with a touched up bkgd?

micke