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Joseph Kling on: Transparent backgrounds and
Drop Shadows for Desktop Publishing

Step 2. Creating the Drop Shadow.

With our earth selected and our foreground and background colors at their default Black & White, hit the Delete key. Your earth should fill with white. Go to menu >Select >Feather. Try feathering your selection to 16 pixels. Then hit Option-Delete. Your selection should now fill with black and feather out gradually to white.
Go to menu >Mode and select Grayscale to delete all color information from the file. The to menu >Mode >Bitmap. Allow Photoshop to delete the additional channel (it will ask you if it’s OK). At the Bitmap dialogue box, make sure that the input and output resolution numbers are the same. Then click on Diffusion Dither. Save your file as an EPS. BE SURE TO CLICK ON “WHITES PRINT AS TRANSPARENT”. The click OK. (Click for the Dialog of this step)

Step 3. Now let’s open our Earth file. Display the Channels Palette. Option-click the alpha channel mask to Select the earth. Display the Paths Palette. Go to the pullout menu and choose Make Path. Use a “0.5” Tolerance. When the path is made, choose Save Path. Name this path “Whatever it is”. Then choose Clipping Path. Do not specify a flatness value.


Let this value default to whatever your output device sets it to be. Your regular path will convert to a clipping path which is shown in the Paths Palette as Outline Type in the name. Go to the channels palette and throw your alpha mask in the trash a the bottom right corner of the channels palette. Do a Save AS and in the dialogue box pull down to EPS. In the EPS Dialogue box, make sure that your Clipping Path name is selected. Do not assign a Flatness Value. Do not click on “Include Halftone Screen” nor “Include Transfer Functions”. Then click on OK.

Next: Step Three: Moving to the DTP Program

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