Creating masks with text in InDesign or Illustrator

Question

I have something that should be easy to create, but I'm having trouble with it. I have a couple words. I want to put another object into it, but have the text mask the object.

For example, I've got these two items - text & a graphic:

What I want to create is this:

Obviously, I can do this in Photoshop very easily. But I want to do it in a way that's vector. I can do this when I'm inserting one object into one path, but when I have multiple paths (letters) none of the pathfinder options seem to work.

How can I do this in ID or AI? Thanks.

Answer 1

In inDesign (5.5), draw your "Whale" illustration and copy it to the pasteboard. Type some text, convert to paths by using the menu "text > contours".

Then while having that selected, rightclick and use "paste in"

That should work.