Line art, Transparency, & QuarkXpress

[kafiala]

I need help. I have scanned some very detailed illustrations. It would be impossible to use a clipping path in my case, but I am trying to take these line art scans and place them in Quark without the white background. My intent is to place a gradient behind these line drawings.

I would think there would be a way to preserve background transparency, but flattening obviously does not allow that. Is this a far fetch dream I am chasing or is this at all possible to do in either Photoshop or Illustrator? I have already explored the possibility of creating the gradient in one of those programs and placing the image in Quark.

I would appreciate any thoughts on this. I have seemed to have tried everything.

Thanks! :) Kathleen

[John_Kallios@adobeforums.com]

Quark does not support transparency except for clipping path period.

Since a clipping path will not work for you…

Either build all of your background elements in Illustrator or use InDesign.

[kafiala]

Thanks so much for your reply. I assumed that. Man, it would be great to have the ability to do that though.

Kathleen

[John_Kallios@adobeforums.com]

it would be great to have the ability to do that though.




ahem…InDesign. ;)

[kafiala]

I have never played with that. Is it cool? Not a Quark fan, eh?

[John_Kallios@adobeforums.com]

Do yourself a favor and download the trial. (30 day full working version)

I am in prepress and I use all the applications. Currently without a doubt, InDesign is the better application.

Note: If you try the trial, you may become spoiled with it. The learning curve is different for different people but for me it was working knowledge within an hour and pretty adept within a week.

Everybody's mileage will vary.

[Wade_Zimmerman@adobeforums.com]

I would recommend doing this as well.

[Dee Holmes]

I hope I'm understanding you correctly.

You said you scanned the art? Do you have Photoshop? If so, you can save it as a .tif and bring it into Quark. Then color the box with the screen.

Or depending on the artwork you could, also from Photoshop, save as an .eps with trasperant whites and bring it into Quark.

But if you need to trap not so easy. Unless it's a bitmap with black as the color, then you can overprint the .tif in the trap window from Quark, or overprint black .eps from the print dialog in Quark.

[Buko@adobeforums.com]

Or depending on the artwork you could, also from Photoshop, save as an
.eps with trasperant whites and bring it into Quark.




Quark does not support transparency

[Dee Holmes]

You save as an .eps from Photoshop, a box comes up with a checkbox for save with transparent whites. Then get picture in Quark. It works for me.

[John_Kallios@adobeforums.com]

I was under the impression that the scans need to be in grayscale or color even though line art was mentioned. If it could be changed to bitmap mode, then it would work in Xpress. But, only then.

[Dee Holmes]

And I was just thinking line art as bitmap. Sorry.

[kafiala]

It worked!!! I never saw that transparent white option before. The only thing is that when I scan as a bitmap image or I convert a scan from grayscale to bitmap, I lose some of the drawings and they become unclear.

[Dee Holmes]

If you need it as a grayscale, then save it as a .tif and bring it into Quark. Then color the background in the picture box.

[kafiala]

Thanks for your help. I knew there was a way to do it, but I wasn't having much luck. I should have just continued my work in Photoshop instead of trying to get results in Illustrator.