I had a very good question from a reader of the version 7 book. Apparently in chapter 4, you cannot merely draw a path around an image of a small stuffed chick in an image and then export it to Pagemaker or Illustrator with the "clipping mask" functioning. This was a last-minute change to the program I did not catch.
Here's what I recommended as a patch:
There is a difficult way to mask outside of the chick using Photoshop and Illustrator. First, you choose File, Export, Paths to Illustrator. Then, you open the Illustrator file in Illustrator, create a compound path out of the two paths, import the Chick.tif image, and then painstakingly align the clipping path with the chick in the image. You then select both image and compound path and choose Clipping Path. This is NOT fun!
The *easiest* way to create a bitmap that has a transparency around it is to use the Export Transparency Wizard. Here's the steps:
1. Open Chick.tif. Create a marquee outline around the chick by clicking on the Loads path as selection icon on the Paths palette.
2. On the Layers palette, right-click (Mac:Ctrl+click) and then choose Layer by Cut.
3. Choose Help, Export Transparent Image.
4. Just breeze through the dialog boxes. Choose Print for media type, and then choose TIFF 8-bit preview image when you get to that box, because an EPS file contains printing information and is pretty useless for onscreen placement without a high quality image header. Encoding doesn't make much difference, but ASCII is the most cross-platform compatible (and reliable but slow to process), and Binary is quickest when your maqchine and your service bureau run the same platform (eg: Mac to Mac, Windows to Windows).
Now, if you'd want to doodle around with the masked picture of the chick in Illustrator *without* a low res image header, choose Online in the Export Wizard, and choose the PNG file format. I did this with the attached image, and as you can see, the screen dump looks AOK.
My Best,
Gare
Here's what I recommended as a patch:
There is a difficult way to mask outside of the chick using Photoshop and Illustrator. First, you choose File, Export, Paths to Illustrator. Then, you open the Illustrator file in Illustrator, create a compound path out of the two paths, import the Chick.tif image, and then painstakingly align the clipping path with the chick in the image. You then select both image and compound path and choose Clipping Path. This is NOT fun!
The *easiest* way to create a bitmap that has a transparency around it is to use the Export Transparency Wizard. Here's the steps:
1. Open Chick.tif. Create a marquee outline around the chick by clicking on the Loads path as selection icon on the Paths palette.
2. On the Layers palette, right-click (Mac:Ctrl+click) and then choose Layer by Cut.
3. Choose Help, Export Transparent Image.
4. Just breeze through the dialog boxes. Choose Print for media type, and then choose TIFF 8-bit preview image when you get to that box, because an EPS file contains printing information and is pretty useless for onscreen placement without a high quality image header. Encoding doesn't make much difference, but ASCII is the most cross-platform compatible (and reliable but slow to process), and Binary is quickest when your maqchine and your service bureau run the same platform (eg: Mac to Mac, Windows to Windows).
Now, if you'd want to doodle around with the masked picture of the chick in Illustrator *without* a low res image header, choose Online in the Export Wizard, and choose the PNG file format. I did this with the attached image, and as you can see, the screen dump looks AOK.
My Best,
Gare
