Dumb Eliptical Selection Crop Question

[SonicMax]

Gang,

Started a photo album project today, for a retiring co-employee; & have forgotten how to turn an image file into a specific shape.

Some of the photos are better suited arranged on the various pages as ovals, rectangles with rounded corners, etc.

But so far, I've only gotten to where I can select a marquee area, cut that; & paste it into a new file which has a transparent background, which I then save as a .jpg or .tiff.

But when that file is opened in my page layout app (Publisher), the areas which are outside of my newly shaped image appear as white. This is no good, as I am layering the various photos onto pale backgrounds.

Is there a way to draw a marquee shape on a digital photo; & eliminate everything outside of the selected area . . . or do digital images always have to be of a linear shape?

Thanks much,

mark4man

BTW - On this subject, how can the marquee be adjusted on the image after it's drawn? I don't seem to be able to drag it to a desired size.

 

[barehug]

You can make a clipping path for an .eps or tiff(and psd), well in quark you can, i don't know if publisher supports clipping paths.
Make a path around the area u want to keep(or select it then convert to psths in the paths palette), double click the work path to save, and give it a name, choose menu from the arrow (top right of palette) and select clipping path(leave flatness blank). save, as .tiff if its not going to a PS printer otherwise choose .eps.
then import it into publisher, if it doen't look transparent, print a copy, it may not show transparecy in the preview.

 

[Arjay418]

Hi.

It might be helpful to know if the project will ultimately be printed out or if it is for a web page. I'm assuming it is to be printed out.

First to answer your question: to the best of my knowledge, .jpgs (and maybe .tiffs) will always be rectangular. Typically the photo-editing software will throw a white background into the picture to make it into a rectangle. That's because .jpgs don't support transparency. (GIFs support transparency, but they are not good for use with photos because they reduce the quality of the photos.)

May I suggest you create a new photoshop document the same size as the paper you'll be printing the photo album on and just creating the page in Photoshop. You can put each page element on its own layer, including text, photos of different shapes... you name it. Then just print it from photoshop.

About moving the marquee: after you've drawn a marquee, make sure you still have the marquee tool selected, then place the mouse inside the area selected by the marquee, drag the marquee all over the page. While drawing the marquee, hold down the space bar to move the marquee around without changing its shape.

--RJ

--RJ

 

[SonicMax]

barehug & Arjay 418,

Thanks for the responses . . . very informative.

Arjay 418: I had decided (before logging back in) to switch over to Illustrator as my page layout app. With that, I could create any number of different shaped photos (in Photoshop), save them as Photoshop files (in which case they would retain the transparency); & place them on the page in Illustrator. My only concern at that point would be that I don't yet know how to crop images in Illustrator (Cropping is easy in Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Publisher, etc., but I haven't figured it out in Illustrator yet.)

Then . . . I read you post. Are you saying I can use Photoshop as a page layout app? I didn't realize such a thing was possible. If it is; & I can simply place my backgrounds & images as layers . . . that's the best bet yet.

Thanks much.

mark4man

 

[Arjay418]

Mark,

I'm glad I could be of some help. I'm a little reluctant to post any suggestions here because I don't think I know that much compared to most of the people here, so I'm glad you were able to get something from it.

Photoshop was not developed to be a page layout program, so it probably lacks some features that you might find in Pagemaker, Indesign or even Illustrator. But I believe you'll get good results if you use it as a page layout program in this case since the main focus will be pictures, which are Photoshop's strong suit.

Just remember a couple of things:

It's probably best to do one page at a time. I'd suggest just making each page of your album a different PS document. This shouldn't be a big deal if you're only make 15-20 pages. (Photoshop would not be a good choice if you were publishing a textbook ) Also, one of the hard things about printing in color is that you'll get all of the colors just right on the screen and when you print them out, they're way off from what you expected. One way to help that is to run the Adobe Gamma procedure. Check your manuals for details on how to do that. It's a process you go through that helps match your screen colors to the ones that will print out. Also, when you print, print in CMYK color mode. You can check the web or your manuals for information about color modes (CMYK and RGB).

Hope it all works out!

---RJ