I just wanted to address something way back in post #22. The challenge/question was:
Check out the attached and place it in an indesign doc... then tell me how on earth this jpg has a transparent b/g??!!??
And the response immediately following was that the image was a jpg and did not have a transparent background. And that is true.

However, as shown in the Illustrator example just above by Sledger, the key is the clipping path Sledger created in AI. However, by default, Indesign will create the clipping path upon import of jpgs.

Take care, Mike