Expert: LizaL - 6/9/2006

Question
I worked for someone who had photos with clipping masks to
hide the background for web or print. How do you hide the
background without altering the original picture. For example, if
I have a photo of a trophy but want that background hidden so
all I see is the trophy, how do I do this with a clipping mask
without deleting the background? I have looked at a bunch of
tutorials but I still don't get it.

Answer
Hi Joanne,

You're right, a clipping mask, or clipping path, is generally used for hiding backgrounds, or other undesired parts of a picture.

Let's say you're printing a flyer. You're using Photoshp as your photo editing software, and using InDesign as you page layout software. Your workflow would be:

1. Open your photo in Photoshop.

2. Create a clipping path.

3. Save the picture with the clipping path information embedded.

4. And make sure you save the picture in a format compatible with InDesign (such as TIF).


Now, here's how to create a clipping path in Photoshop:

1. Open your photo, and select the Pen tool from your tool palette. Draw a path around the item in your photo that you want to *show*.

2. Open your Paths palette, if it's not already open. Click on the flyout menu (the little triangle on the top right of the palette), and from those submenus, select Save Path. If you click on OK, the path will be titled Path 1, which is the default name -- but of course you can title this path anything you like. (This little feature comes in handy if you know you'll have more than one path in your picture.)

3. Now that you've saved your path, go back to that same flyout menu, and select Clipping Path, because that option should be available to you now. You'll be prompted to choose a path, and at this point, your choices will be None, or Path 1, since you've only created one path.

4. Select Path 1. The flatness box below the path name selection area is for smoothing the printing, by the way; I've always understood that a low number in this box is optional, or you can just leave it blank. It's not a big issue, from what I've always been told.

5. Now save your picture -- and the format will depend on where the picture is going. Generally speaking, if it's going to a page layout program like Quark or InDesign, you'll want to save it as a TIF file, or an EPS.

6. What happens to your path? It's saved right along with your picture information. So when you open InDesign, and use the Place command to place your picture, your picture will be placed *without* its background. It will retain the clipping path information you created in Photoshop.

I've created two little movies for you -- the first is me creating a simple clipping path where I go around the girl's hat and face, making a quick path, and then I save it as a clipping path. You won't see this, but I save the file as a TIF, since I know I can use TIF in InDesign.

The second movie shows me placing that same picture into InDesign -- and as you can see, there's no background because the photo retained the clipping path information I created in Photoshop.

Movie one:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/clipping_path.mov

Movie two:
http://little-works.com/all_experts/indd_place.mov

As I mentioned, the clipping path I did was pretty rough and quick -- for the sake of keeping that little movie small and not something to clog up our servers! But the good thing is, in Photoshop, you can always go back and adjust your path with your pen editing tools, before you save it as a clipping path. So you can be as precise as you want with your clipping path.

I think one big trick to this process is to be sure you first save your path, period, then go back and save it as a clipping path. You have to do those steps in that order, to first make Photoshop recognize your work path, then recognize it again as a clipping path.

Hope this helps, and please post back if it doesn't!

Lisa