can anyone help please with photoshop clipping paths?

[John Gregson]

Hi Greg,
I’m self taught in photoshop so this might be the long way round but here goes. Open image in photoshop, highlight and delete the white background so there is no white there. If this doesn’t work, file new set as transparent, go back to original image, select white background, select inverse to highlight the image and drag and drop into new transparent background. Save as photoshop file and then import into coreldraw.

Hope this makes sense

Cheers John

[Martin Grimmer]

Greg,

One other way as follows (am using CS2 but assume similar for earlier verison):

Highlight what you want in photoshop using magic wand or whatever, press CTRL + J – this will bring your highlighted selection into a separate layer with transparency.

Open the PSD file in Illustrator, make sure you import all layers and dont flatten (otherwise you won’t have transparent layer). Check layer pallete in Illustrator, and highlight the correct layer that you are after (in photoshop you could always delete any layers that you dont need before you save, and then only bring in the one required layer needed into Illustrator.).

Hope helps.

Martin

[RobGF]

Hi, if you’re trying to save a file with an actual clipping path and not a PSD file with a transparent background here’s the general gist:

From your path palette, ask for a new path. By default I believe the new path is called work path.
Use the pen tools on your regular tool palette to draw around the image. There are varients of the pan tool to change the direction of a path, add points, delete points… etc.
Make sure you close the path.
On the path palette, double click on your work path. This will allow you to give it a name like "clip"
Once you have named your path you can go back to the path palette and use the sub menu to select clipping path. You will be asked to choose which path to use as a clipping path. For flatness you can leave this blank unless you have a very, very complex path. A flatness of 3 often is not noticeable on output and really is easier for RIPs to handle.
Save the file in an apporpriate format. EPS is a very safe bet.

You’re done. Now that file can be imported to just about any program and the clipping path will work.

You did not need to remove a background using this method. You simply needed to trace the area you wanted to keep.

It is possible that some of the software you use may not like displaying the results of the clipping path but when you print to a PostScript device it should work just fine.

There are other ways to achive the same type of effect but you asked about clipping paths…

Rob

[autosign]

This is the best method.

Although I tend to just make a mask in my sign program (flexi) most of the time.