Cut Out / Clipping Path for print Advice Needed

[mchris]

Hi All,

I'm currently producing a Jewellery catalogue for a client, I've done the photography, now working on the layout. The background of the images is almost pure white, I don't want to cut the jewellery out as i have far too many pieces to do it would take too long.

Now here is my problem. When I'm doing layout in Quark if the background isn't exactly pure white you can see the straight edge where the box finishes. I'm planning on batch editing all images to bring the white levels up to 1-2% to help avoid any show-through. I could add a picture box with a plain white image of about the same levels behind all images on the page however this wouldn't help as in all some cases the levels aren't the same top and bottom... If i use clipping paths i still end up with a solid line as I can't use tranceparenies in quark.

At the moment the best thing i can think of is to do the layout in quark, then batch save each page as a eps then just get rid of any straight box edges in photoshop... save as .tiff/jpgs and replace all pages with whole page images.

What do you think? I hope that makes sense!?

 

[DavidFDM]

The best solution is clipping paths in Photoshop. Create a new path and draw the bezier curves inset into the image by a pixel or so to avoid the "halo" effect. Once this is done, add the images to Quark as EPS files and you are good to go.

- D

 

[mchris]

thanks for the advice, problem is that would involve me drawing clipping paths for nearly 400 images, and some of the items are quite intricate... That's what i'm trying to avoid...

 

[CortexRock]

I'm sure you've probably already tried this, but...

Select the white background with the Magic Wand tool, making sure you set your tolerances so you don't accidentally select parts of the jewellery. You can use Select > Similar to pick up any bits that get missed.

Then convert the selection to a path and apply appropriate clipping settings and export to Quark in TIF or EPS.

It's still a bit time consuming, but it depends on the level of detail you want!

 

[mchris]

Yep i have

It kinda worked, but not really well enough, i fiddled with the tolerance and got it that it was okish, but it worked out that i would then have to tidy the selection with the quickmask...

Does anyone know of a technical reason not to export each page as a eps when they're complete sort out any background problems in photoshop, then just use full page images throughout the catalogue? I mean it does seem like a bodge job, but it's also seeming like the easiest method...

 

[xfiftyfour]

Does anyone know of a technical reason not to export each page as a eps when they're complete sort out any background problems in photoshop, then just use full page images throughout the catalogue? I mean it does seem like a bodge job, but it's also seeming like the easiest method...

You don't want to do this because of your text. In Quark and InDesign, text is vector. If you make the whole page an image, then your text will look fuzzy when output because it'll take on the resolution of the output device. Not to mention, you'll shoot yourself in the foot if they ever want to use the catalogue in the future but want to make some quick text changes..

 

[mchris]

oh yes sorry! I should have mentioned there is very little text, this would all be done in quark. If that is the only reason then i think thats what i'll do, it wouldnt take much to send the text to the back before creating the eps's...

 

[iMeowbot]

Not sure what you have for existing white space on these, but do you have enough where you could grow the canvas, feather the original edges, and blast the intended background color onto the larger layer to match?

 

[AlexisV]

It's much easier with Quark 7 - just save as a transparent PSD file!

With 6, you're pretty much limited to messing about with clipping paths I'm afraid.

 

[xfiftyfour]

oh yes sorry! I should have mentioned there is very little text, this would all be done in quark. If that is the only reason then i think thats what i'll do, it wouldnt take much to send the text to the back before creating the eps's...

ohhh.. well in that case, yeah, it'd be a bodge job, but if you think that's easiest..

 

[Jim Campbell]

Select the white background with the Magic Wand tool, making sure you set your tolerances so you don't accidentally select parts of the jewellery. You can use Select > Similar to pick up any bits that get missed.

Select the background, as described above. Then, Select -> Inverse. Then Select -> Modify -> Contract ... This enables you to shrink the selection down with very fine control, until any unwanted background (or, even, a slightly fuzzy edge) disappears.

Then select "Make Work Path" from the Paths palette, double click the path in the palette to give it a proper name and then save the file as a TIFF or EPS.

Cheers!

Jim