Help Needed with Clipping Path

[Byn]

Hi Everyone,

Let's say I have a .jpg image of a moon against a dark night sky. I scanned it into Photoshop CS2 and saved it as Moon.psd
What I need to do now is remove the dark background so I have just the moon, and save that file so I can place it into an Illustrator CS2 file. This is what I did.

I made a copy of background layer in the layers palette.
Using the copy, I used the pen tool to outline the moon.
After I'd outlined it, the selection was filled with white so I set the fill in the layers palette to zero.
I then switched to the paths palette and clicked on the drop down list and selected "Make Selection" with a feather radius of zero pixels. I now had "marching ants" around the selection. The path name was called Shape 1 Vector mask. I double click the path and named it Moon. I now had two paths in the path palette, Shape 1 Vector Mask and Moon.
With the Moon path highlighted, I clicked on the down arrow in the Paths palette and selected "Clipping Path" and in the box I selected 1 pixel flatness.
I now did File - Save As - Moon.tiff
When I placed the Moon.tiff file in the Illustrator file, it placed the whole image of the moon and background sky, not just the moon as I required.

Would someone please tell me what I did wrong and how to correct it?

Thanks for your help.

Byn

 

[mscallisto]

save as gif

 

[Pixelchik]

Another option is to make your selection of the moon, when you get the "marching ants" then copy that selection (Edit>Copy) then start a new file with the resolution and color mode you desire, and the background transparent. Then paste your selection of the moon into that file. Now save that document as .psd file and do not flatten it. When you place that document into Illustrator. Now you should have transparency in your Illustrator document.

 

[Byn]

Hi mscallisto & Pixelchik,

I've managed to mask out the moon on a transparent background, but when I place it Illustrator, I still have the "white box" surrounding the moon. I want to place the moon on top of a page of text so that the text comes up to the edge of the moon, not just to the edge of the "white box" that surrounds it.

I tried saving the image as a .gif file but that didn't work either.

I'm obviously doing something wrong. Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it.

Byn

 

[Pixelchik]

Byn,

You don't need to use a clipping path or mask. Just use any selection tool to select your moon shape and copy that shape and paste it into a document with a transparent background and save it as a PSD. It should place into Illustrator and have transparancy around the moon shape. I do this all the time and it works in Illustrator and InDesign as well.