PICTURES

There are several different tools which can be used to create a picture box—the "piece of paper" required in order to put an image onto your page. Picture boxes are represented in the tool box—just below the text box tool—as rectangles with X's through them. This symbol is reminiscent of art directors' shorthand to indicate where a picture would go and how large it was to be.

Remember that image files must be saved as .eps or .tif in format for use in XPress. Although other image files can be imported, for print production .eps and .tif are best.

Before you can "get" a picture into Quark XPress, you need to have an active picture box, and the content tool selected.

When that is established, from the File menu, halfway down, you will see that where it once said "get text" it now says "get picture." Quark XPress knows the difference between text and image. If you draw the wrong kind of box, you will not be able to place what you want into it

If "get picture" is dimmed, either the picture box isn't active, or the content tool isn't selected.

The dialog box which allows you to locate the document you wish to place will only show you those files which are appropriate: if you are getting a picture, only picture files will be visible.

Your picture box must be selected with the content tool active before you can "get" a picture.

You can manipulate the size and cropping of an image with the content tool. Reposition, or resize the picture box with the either the content or object tool.

Use the content tool, your arrow keys, or the measurements palette to nudge the image into place within the picture box.

You can also use the Style menu to fit the box to the picture and vice versa.

Hold down the command, option, and shift keys, to drag the box and image to a new size while keeping things in proportion.

Using text from Adobe Illustrator

If you are creating text, or an image that includes text in Illustrator to bring into an XPress document, you either need to turn the text into outlines (Type > create outlines), embed the font, or include the font with the XPress file’s fonts and images: XPress reads the Illustrator file as an image, so it can’t tell if you’re using a font at all.

Manipulating images

Using either the Item > modify dialog box or the measurements palette, you can skew, rotate, or flip the image within a picture box.

Black and white images can be manipulated using the Style menu.

You can change the background color of Illustrator images saved as .eps files by using the clipping feature under Item > runaround (command T) or Item > clipping (command option T).

Once you've done that, just select a fill color for your picture box.

In addition, images with clipping paths or white backgrounds can be set to have a transparent background in XPress so that content behind the image becomes visible.

Runarounds

Runarounds have become more common with the advent of layout software like XPress, which makes the process incredibly easy. While all text boxes are transparent by default, all picture boxes have a default runaround of “item” with a 1 point “force field.”

In order for text to run around an image, the picture box must be on top of the text box.
To establish a larger “force field” choose Item > runaround or command T and specify a distance in points—at least 5 or more.

To runaround a shape, what’s called a silhouette, you need to either have an image with a clipping path attached to it, or an image with a white background and saved as an .eps file.

In the example to the right, the heart is an .eps file from Illustrator. The scissors have a clipping path attached to them by creating a path in Photoshop and saving it as a clipping path. If you want the clipping path to work, you must save the Photoshop file in .eps rather than .tif format.