White is not a color and so will not print. The only time you really need a clipping path is is you have something which is directly behind the image -- overlapping -- and you want that.

See If you ask about a Tiff you get a (Miss) Tiff

White is not a color and so will not print. The only time you really need a clipping path is is you have something which is directly behind the image — overlapping — and you want that.

And a PSD with a transparent background can solve that too, can't it?

True. You can use a transparent background, but I'm a little old school and tend to not trust that.

Pretty funny, Dan. :^D

If you ask about a lamp, will you also get Miss Tiffany? :-)

ChrisL

There's no good reason that I know of to use anything other than .psd and .ai in InDesign. It loves the native formats…
peace

There’s no good reason that I know of to use anything other than .psd and .ai in InDesign. It loves the native formats…

Correct me if I'm wrong but sending layered native file formats to printers is risky and a bad habit.

Re: white background -- double check that the background of your photo is truly "white." A 1 or 2 percent dot in any of the process colors can be tough to see onscreen. Use the info palette to double check.

i think it's fine if you link .psd and .ai files to an InDesign doc. there shouldn't be anything risky about it. setting up the file, now that's a different story…

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nc

[double post]

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nc

David - I 'm primarily sending out PDFs. InDesign takes full advantage of PS and Illy features when you place native files. Place an Illustrator EPS - you will see a white background - .ai - gone. It's very rare someone asks me for a packaged ID file, basically only on really large signage like billboards. A lot of billboard printers and a few national magazines also ask for layered native files from PS and Illustrator. As long as I'm getting proofs I don't worry…
peace

Fair enough, I was just taught to always use EPS files for vector and TIFFs for anything done in photoshop. Since you're mostly outputting PDFs though, like you said it doesn't really matter what files you use in your layout. :-)

…along those lines i think the eps/tiff thing comes from a time when Quark was the standard and since native files don't work in Quark, we have all been taught to default to eps and tiffs. …but now with InDesign becoming the standard, we're not bound to those combatability issues anymore.

…not that i have any idea what the actual difference between a .tiff and .psd is anyway!
: ^ }

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nc

At the last adobe roadshow the guy there said that the future lies in using pdfs instead of eps/tiffs. I found that a bit problematic because with pdfs you have to know from the beginning how the document is going to be printed. What do you think about that issue?

Adobe is making PDF more and more editable and cross-application, so I could easily see a day when PDFs will be the best way to bring graphics into just about any layout program.

As for transparent backgrounds, tiffs can do layers the same way PSDs can, and illustrator opens an EPS just as easily as an AI, so what's the attraction of leaving a file in adobe native format?

it's just better dangit!
: )

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nc

Good explanation istitch.
quote - As for transparent backgrounds, tiffs can do layers the same way PSDs can, and illustrator opens an EPS just as easily as an AI, so what’s the attraction of leaving a file in adobe native format?

InDesign is built to use the native formats of Illustrator and Photoshop. So why struggle? It also handles transparency better from these formats.
A lot of these ideas come from working with Quark. I am not talking about Quark.
As for pdf, the future is now. Almost all my work is sent out this way. Magazines, newspapers, most print media not only accept pdf, they request it. Properly prepared pdfs are full res, support vector art and embedded fonts, and are really small.
peace

X1-A all the way!

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nc

I guess the argument for bringing graphics in as EPS and TIFF would be that if, later on, your layout needs to be converted to Quark or Frame or some such, it will be easier on the people doing the conversion.

Also if sometime in the future Adobe goes out of business (gasp), EPS and TIFF will presumably still be viable formats, while AI and PSD won't.

Re "At the last adobe roadshow the guy there said that the future lies in using pdfs instead of eps/tiffs...."

It can become a bit baffling when you find an orphaned PDF on your desktop and aren't sure whether you should open it in Photoshop, Illustrator, or just Acrobat; I think there's some value in using the least complex file format suitable for a given image.

And if you're going through iterations of your Photoshop/Illustrator artwork, saving with different version numbers, it's handy to just save off a 'flat' EPS/TIFF with the same name each time, so that links in my Quark/InDesign doc can just be updated.