Pen tool questions

[Andrea_Russell@adobeforums.com]

This may be hard to explain without a visual but here it goes.

I have designed a catalog with sculpture. In InDesign I have a background I want the sculpture to sit on. Only the sculpture will have a varnish on it not the background. So I am importing the pieces of sculpture making a clipping path around them manually in InDesign with the pen tool. Then copying and pasting the piece of sculpture into the path I created. I know how to do that just fine.

My question is how do I do the few pieces that have holes.

For example. What if I had a donut a round circle with a hole in the center. I make the circle path. I then paste into the path my sculpture so the background is cut out. What do I do about the center? Is the only way just to make other paths and import my background into it so I have several layers or is there a simpler way I don’t know about.

I don’t want other suggestions on how to make paths. My printer asked that I do it this way and I am almost done I just have 3 pieces that have these holes.

Any advice would be great!!! Thanks...

[Bob Levine]

Check out the pathfinder palette.

Bob

[Andrea_Russell@adobeforums.com]

I go to the object - pathfinder but it wont let me select it how do I open that palette?

[Tom_L@adobeforums.com]

create another path of the inside bits, then select the inside and the outside then object>pathfinder>subtract

[Bjorn_Ost@adobeforums.com]

It would be better to make those clipping paths in Photoshop. It is faster, more accurate and you get a high res preview with no speed penalty while working on it. But most important, the clipping path stays with the image.

It is easy enough to use the embedded clipping path later in ID to use as a varnish plate.