Background with JPEG

[IScheitle at teledyne.com]

I'm not sure if transparent images are officially supported in FM, but I 
have been able to do this when there is an occasional need. FrameMaker 
(5.5 or earlier? through 7.2) has been able to handle a Photoshop EPS 
image with a clipping path that defines the visible object shape. (Refer 
to Photoshop's Help for creating a clipping path.) Other file formats, 
including JPEGs, don't seem to work.

Assuming that you have a background fill or image on the master page, you 
can get an image on the body page to display with transparency in the PDF 
output. To do so:
1. Import the EPS image with clipping path into the FM document. This 
places the image in an anchored frame. 
2. Select the image inside the anchored frame. 
3. From FM's Tools Palette, click the Set Fill Pattern button and select 
None. (This is the key step.)

At this point, the EPS preview image that you see in FM is unchanged. 
However, the PDF output will display and print the image with the 
transparent regions defined by the clipping path. I suspect that this 
successful transparency has more to do with postscript and Distiller than 
FrameMaker.

With regard to the text runaround issue, the anchored frame can be set to 
"Run into Paragraph." The text will flow around the shape of the anchored 
frame. Although this box may look a bit crude, the transparent image and 
anchored frame will behave nicely if the document is edited or re-flowed. 

If you still insist on having the text flow around the shape of the image 
object instead of the anchored frame, I think the only way to do this is 
to eliminate the anchored frame. For this work-around, you place the image 
on the body page -- but don't expect the image to move with the text flow. 
Continuing from the steps above, you can get the text to flow around the 
image shape:
4. Drag the image outside of the anchored frame, then delete the anchored 
frame. Note that the text still flows around the rectangular shape of the 
image. 
5. Select the image and set its runaround properties to Don't Run Around. 
6. Send the image to back (Graphics>Send to back). 
6. From the Tools Palette, select the Draw Polygon tool and draw a shape 
for the text to flow around. 
7. Set the Polygon shape's runaround properties to Run around Contour. 
8. From the Tools Palette, set the shape's Pen and Fill Patterns to None. 

Ian Scheitle
Lurker, on digest


> Message: 13
> Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2007 11:15:02 -0400
> From: "Art Campbell" <art.campbell at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Background with JPEG
> To: "mathieu jacquet" <bobitch at hotmail.com>
> Cc: framers at lists.frameusers.com
> Message-ID:
>    <c7d9dd600703200815x7cef98c7v3b1c3d6d16fce304 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> Well,
> 
> No, FM doesn't support transparency. However, you might run into a
> disagreement on whether it's broken or not. As whoever you quoted
> mentioned, the tradeoff seems to be support for runarounds or
> transparency, and they picked runarounds.
> 
> Art
> 
> On 3/20/07, mathieu jacquet <bobitch at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > I come back to what you both said about transparency 
> > after reading this technical note by Adobe :
> >
> > " Transparent Color in Images Is White in FrameMaker