The EPS file format

65 Comments to “The EPS file format”

Bob Pavelko, on August 16th, 2007 at 1:28 am Said:

I use Adobe Illustrator CS2 to create EPS graphics imported into Adobe FrameMaker 7.2. I then make a high-end PDF to have it professionally printed. Why shouldn’t I save the graphic files as AI instead; they’re smaller files. Is there any information lost? What are the advantages of using EPS files over AI files?
Laurens, on August 17th, 2007 at 3:26 am Said:

As far as I know, no information is lost working with AI.
I think the main difference is one of ‘prinicpals’. EPS is a universal file format - you can use such files in any application that supports this standard file format. AI is a proprietary Adobe file format, mainly compatible with Adobe applications themselves. It is Adobe’s way of making sure you stick with their software and leave other products untouched. As long as your are happy with that: no problemo!
srikanth, on August 28th, 2007 at 2:06 pm Said:

how can i see these format file was .eps files
Yam Khatri, on August 29th, 2007 at 12:03 pm Said:

I would like to more about EPS
Laurens, on August 29th, 2007 at 2:03 pm Said:

You can see that a file is an EPS file by looking at its extension, which should be .eps

If the extension got lost in file transfer or is not shown, the only other alternative that I know is to open the file with an editor or word processor and look at the first lines of text. They should indicate that this is an EPS-file. This first line could for instance be: %!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-1.2 or something similar - with EPSF clearly indicating that this is an EPS file. One of the subsequent lines tells you which application was used to create the file.

Also check out http://www.quite.com/ps/eps1.htm
Laurens, on August 29th, 2007 at 2:06 pm Said:

Regarding the use of AI versus EPS: it was discussed in one of the prepress forums of PrintPlanet recently. Here is what one user had to say:

Illustrator files with transparency that are never saved as an EPS file and passed to a prepress department (usually as a PDF saved from Illustrator) are well known to present significant issues when it comes to ripping and printing.

These issues simply don’t come into play if the file has been saved as an EPS at some point.

If you want to work solely in Illustrator, at least provide the prepress department your working ai file and all linked and embedded images (and fonts of course). We will save it as an EPS for you or whatever else needs to be done to make sure your file prints accurately.

Illustrator as the final file ???? - JUST NOT THE REALITY OF PRINTING.
Narendra verma, on August 29th, 2007 at 3:20 pm Said:

How can i open .EPS file? can u tell me an appropriate software also?]
i got a >EPS file from someone , but when i tried to open it, its not opening, pls kindlt help me ASAP
daisy18jan2002@gmail.com
Ben, on August 29th, 2007 at 7:19 pm Said:

http://www.brothersoft.com/graphics_design/viewers/viewer_download_42230.html

you can view the files by downloading the above.
Laurens, on August 30th, 2007 at 2:42 am Said:

EPS-files are a bit like PDF files. They can be viewed, inserted in other documents but it is not really a file format that is meant to be edited. If you need to open an EPS file to edit it, drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw are probably your best bet. This may work but there is no guarantee that it does. The best approach is to get hold of the original source file, correct it and then generate a new EPS-file.
PRATIK, on August 30th, 2007 at 2:20 pm Said:

How can I convert a .bmp or .jpg file to a .eps or .ai file? I do not have Photoshop or Corel draw.
Laurens, on August 31st, 2007 at 5:48 am Said:

There are conversion tools such as GraphicConverter that can do this. Googling “bmp eps conversion” brings up a ton of other alternatives for both Mac and PC.
lee, on August 31st, 2007 at 4:23 pm Said:

thank you
GeLaLaineFresh, on September 2nd, 2007 at 4:14 am Said:

Interesting site!
Actually, i am trying to include preview in eps file that does not contain one, in order to be able to visualize them in a navigator. I’m working on a linux laptop. Do you have an idea on how to include this preview (i already try epstool without success)?
Thanks.
Laurens, on September 2nd, 2007 at 4:08 pm Said:

I am not a linux user anymore so I don’t know any of the tools. One thing you might try is creating an EPS with preview (using GIMP or so?) and then COPY and PASTE the preview image in your other file using an editor. I once wanted to create a prank EPS-file like that, with the lady in the image that is printed being slightly less dressed than the one shown on screen. This was before the internet was available and I never stumbled upon two images that could be used for this. By the time the net was available, I had already grown up
kalidoss, on September 14th, 2007 at 7:30 pm Said:

how to open eps file? plz
mahesh kumar, on September 14th, 2007 at 9:58 pm Said:

pls give a source to open .eps files
jeremy, on September 15th, 2007 at 12:06 am Said:

EPS files are “vector” files. AI is just to open your project up in “Abobe Illustartor”.
One important tip.
If in your project you use a special font (i would suggest doing this with any font what so ever) CONVERT IT TO “OUTLINES”
to do this select your text input then do this (in CS3)–>Object/Create outlines

this will enable you to not loose the font when opening it on another computer. Plus if you only need vectors for your files you need to convert it into outlines too- because Text Input is Art input not VECTOR.

chers
Laurens, on September 15th, 2007 at 4:03 am Said:

Thanks Jeremy for jumping in. Allow me to add to your comment that EPS files are usually vector files but can also be bitmap images. If the advise to use Adobe Illustrator does not work, try Photoshop. In my first comment from August 29, I explained how to see which application originally was used to create the file. That might help.
Emma B, on September 17th, 2007 at 5:53 pm Said:

I have included EPS images on a website which are visible on some machines but show as an error on others. Am I doing something wrong when creating the image or is it a glitch with Internet Explorer?
Laurens, on September 18th, 2007 at 5:23 am Said:

Did you actually use EPS-images on a web page? The file format is completely unsuitable for that type of usage and you can only hope the software can convert everything into a format that all browsers can digest. Don’t blame Internet Explorer - stay away from EPS for web publishing.

In fact, try to stay away from EPS at all.

I’ve added an interesting comment from Adobe to the end of my article on the history of PostScript. In it Dov Isaacs clearly states: “…Adobe will continue to support EPS as a legacy graphics format for import of non-color managed, opaque graphical data into Adobe applications (such as InDesign and Illustrator). Although we certain do not recommend that new graphical content be stored in EPS format (except to satisfy the need to import data into page layout programs that aren’t quite PDF-centric — no need to mention names here!), our user base should feel comfortable that there is no need to worry about a need to convert their very sizable libraries of EPS-based graphic assets.”

In shoart: EPS is a legacy file format. PDF is the way to go when it comes to printed matter. For web publishing, I think PNG is the most suitable bitmap format while Flash or SVG are more suitable for vector graphics.
rupesh, on September 20th, 2007 at 12:32 am Said:

how to deal with eps files ??
Laurens, on September 20th, 2007 at 1:02 am Said:

That is a very generic question and a lot of stuff is already covered on this page. What exactly ido you want to do with EPS-files?
Adam, on September 20th, 2007 at 9:07 pm Said:

How do I convert a PDF to an EPS?
Laurens, on September 22nd, 2007 at 5:30 am Said:

If you have Acrobat Professional: open the document, select ‘Save as’ and choose EPS as the file format.

Whether there is actually still a need to convert EPS files to PDF is an entirely different issue. I can only imagine that this is needed when working with old software packages that cannot cope with PDF yet.

Take into account that the conversion from PDF to EPS may not be flawless: if the source file contained transparency, that will be flattened. The quality of blends may suffer and in some rare cases, people have reported issues with fonts (characters being replaced by weird characters or spaces)
tim, on September 24th, 2007 at 9:45 am Said:

i work at class on a mac that uses illustrator cs2. i use cs3 windows. i hate now knowing which file to save work as when i use a particular program like illustrator. what file type do i save an ill file as if i need to take my jumpdrive to class and open it on mac but still be able to work on it there on the school’s mac computer??? and photoshop for that matter as well???

this is extremely frustrating for me. extremely!!!
alex, on September 25th, 2007 at 12:19 am Said:

Hi, does anyone know a way of converting a word document into an eps file?
Laurens, on September 27th, 2007 at 3:31 am Said:

Converting a Word document to eps? Yuck…

One work-around that I am aware of is exporting the Word file as a PDF and then either exporting each page from that PDF as an EPS using a tool like Acrobat Professional or placing each page of the PDF in a layout application that is capable of generating EPS files.

Another solution would be to import the Word file in a lay-out or drawing application, tweak the layout until it fits your needs and then export to EPS.
Justin Cachia, on October 1st, 2007 at 2:59 pm Said:

I recieved a cd which contains alot of EPS files.
When i open these files all i get is a box with diagonal lines in it. What can i do?
Please reply asap.

Thanks
Justin
Nick, on October 15th, 2007 at 6:16 pm Said:

I was looking for advice on colorspace assciated with eps format files. What happens if I try and include PMS defined colors in an eps file? Are they automatically converted to CMYK or RGB, or are they left unchanged?
Laurens, on October 16th, 2007 at 2:55 am Said:

Spot colors can be maintained in an eps file. The application creating the eps file usually includes alternative RGB or CMYK values of the spot colors in the eps data.

It is up to the operator of the prepress system that processes the file to determine what will be done with the spot color.

A system such as Agfa ApogeeX allows a user to
- output the spot color as a separate plate
- use the color values supplied in the eps to convert the color to CMYK
- do a conversion to CMYK based on the Lab values found in its spot color library
- do a conversion to CMYK based on custom values that can be entered in an exception dictionary
Nick, on October 16th, 2007 at 5:47 pm Said:

Many thanks for that
habib, on October 16th, 2007 at 9:30 pm Said:

i have some eps file and i want to import them into a word document. i can convert them to pdf format and take a snapshot of them with adobe acrobat. but while converting this word document into the pdf, the images havent the first quality. how i can import this documents without quality losses?
thanks alot…
Lisa Hyde, on October 26th, 2007 at 6:00 pm Said:

I’m having a problem viewing some .eps files in Word.

When I insert an .eps file into Word (such as my company logo), I have no problem viewing it in Word. (Although the preview is not crisp, it prints beautifully.)

However, when I create something in Illustrator myself, save it as an .eps, and insert it into Word, I can’t view it. All I get is a blank white “placeholder” box.

Obviously I’m missing a step somewhere. Does anyone know if there’s a specific setting? I want to keep it as an .eps file (not the “save for MS Word” option that makes it a .png file.

Any advice is appreciated. I can’t figure it out!
Laurens, on October 27th, 2007 at 4:19 am Said:

Saving from CS2 as an Illustrator 8 file does the trick on my system - I can import the file and get a preview in Word 2003.

I hope this also answers Habib’s question: don’t try to convert the EPS file but import them as an EPS in Word. Even if the preview is blank, the output on a PostScript printer should still be fine. It is obviously your conversion to a screen capture in Acrobat which causes the quality loss.
Holly, on November 13th, 2007 at 6:21 am Said:

I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what program I need to purchase to create some things in .eps format. What I need to create is a layout for a box that will be printed out and assembled. I need a program that I can draw the flat box out in scale and use Pantone colors. I have looked into a few like Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator, but I was just wondering if anyone could give me any suggestions or opinions. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
john, on December 9th, 2007 at 4:58 pm Said:

EPSQLPlugIn is a QuickLook plugin for Mac OS X Leopard to extend QuickLooks functionality to be able to display previews and thumbnails for eps files.

http://www.eternalstorms.at/utilities/epsqlplg/index.html
Mike, on December 11th, 2007 at 2:16 am Said:

when I create labels for CDs and send them to the printer I save as eps in photoshop, but theres 2 to choose from, DCS 0.1 and DCS 0.2, sometimes they can’t open the file, is it because I chose the wrong one and if so which one should I choose?
Laurens, on December 11th, 2007 at 2:56 am Said:

Unless your labels contain spot colors there is no point in using DCS, as discussed on this page:
http://www.prepressure.com/library/file-formats/eps-dcs

Are you sure your printer doesn’t prefer another file format?

I am not aware of any issues with DCS 1 or DCS2 files giving problems with opening them. You might try asking around on http://forums.b4print.com - maybe one of those guys knows about this.
Aaron, on December 19th, 2007 at 4:34 am Said:

Please forgive an odd question, but is it legal to use non-adobe programs to export .eps files? Specifically open-source programs? I’ve been searching for an answer to this about several adobe formats. (.ai, .psd, .eps) I haven’t been able to get an answer from Adobe.
Any help would be much appreciated.
sledger, on December 19th, 2007 at 6:35 am Said:

Software companies who produce applications which can export to those formats have already entered into a licensing agreement with the copyright holder. You need not concern yourself about such issues as they are not yours to worry about.
If you own a legal copy of the software you use to export these file types, then you are legally covered.
Laurens, on December 21st, 2007 at 5:35 am Said:

Maybe the question is really about writing such a program yourself? In that case there are indeed some pitfalls as some of the compression algorithms used in PostScript are proprietary. Understanding the legal consequences of font embedding would also be useful, especially for TrueType fonts that can have a flag to indicate that they should never be embedded. I have never read or encountered any info on this topic so I cannot really point to better sources of information.
Aaron, on December 22nd, 2007 at 3:08 am Said:

Thank you for your feedback. I’m most concerned about using existing open source programs, not making the programs myself. (Though I can see how I didn’t make that clear.)
Laurens, on January 4th, 2008 at 5:43 am Said:

I deleted a message from Scott who posted a cryptic message using an incorrect e-mail address. Please use a valid e-mail address if you post comments on these pages.

As for the occasional smutty ‘joke’-messages: this server logs IP-addresses and a simple search tells me which school you are from. Go play somewhere else.
John, on January 9th, 2008 at 12:06 am Said:

http://indesignsecrets.com/my-100-eps-challenge.php
Debbie Evans, on January 16th, 2008 at 11:30 pm Said:

Hi,
I have created ai and eps files for people to download from my website and cut on their vinyl cutters. I am having a terrible time with our eps files. They test fine on my computer…but don’t work on others. From what I read above, it probably has to do with the 8 bit way I am saving the file. How can I lower the file size in corel draw…I have found that the file name has something to do with how it works as well…any exact format as to how a file name should read. I really appreciate any help.
Christopher, on January 17th, 2008 at 11:22 am Said:

I have somewhat of an opposite question from the few I read (I didn’t read all the comments though, I gave up). I need to know how to convert an .eps graphics file into a .jpg or a bitmap file, is that possible and how can I do it?
Laurens, on January 22nd, 2008 at 4:14 am Said:

A number of drawing applications like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw can open EPS-files and save the data as a bitmap file. If you only need a low resolution bitmap, placing an EPS in an application like InDesign, selecting the best possible preview quality and then creating a screen capture is another possibility. You could do the same thing by opening the EPS in Acrobat professional.
Daniel Koo, on February 5th, 2008 at 5:14 am Said:

Hi, I am trying to better understand the overall EPS document structure. Namely, if there are any plain text included in the document as plain text, not image, is there a way I can parse through the document and identify these texts? I noticed that some labels are surrounded with [( and )]?
Any thoughts greatly appreciated!
-dK
Cynthia, on February 16th, 2008 at 4:46 am Said:

We are required to have EPS images of our sponsor logos in order to use them on our fundraising posters. We use Publisher to create posters. We are unable to see the EPS images when doing this. Is Adobe Illustrator more compatible?
Laurens, on February 17th, 2008 at 5:13 pm Said:

Cynthia, I don’t have Publisher at my disposal to test things out but here iswhat is likely happening: for display purposes, EPS-images contain a small embedded preview or thumbnail image. This image can be either PC-style or Mac-style. Since graphic arts works mostly with Macs, most EPS-files have a Mac-style preview image embedded. Most professional layout applications can display both PC and Mac style previews. There are however applications that cannot handle both types of previews. I suspect Publisher is one of them.

There are two possible solutions for your problem:
- convert the EPS-files to PC-style EPS files. There are Mac tools that can do this but a quick search didn’t pop up any PC equivalents (which are bound to exist somewhere)
- Move to a professional lay-out application, in which case Adobe Illustrator wuld indeed do the trick.
Laurens, on February 17th, 2008 at 5:15 pm Said:

Daniel, it’s been ages since I looked at PostScript code. Text can indeed be plain readable text (I remember fixing a typo this way ages ago) but I don’t know any longer how it is identified.
Lawrence, on February 18th, 2008 at 9:32 pm Said:

When using eps formatted files to store .dxf and .dwg type documents from CAD, what is the best program to use in order to preview the eps file in its highest resolution?
A. Gardiner, on February 20th, 2008 at 8:17 pm Said:

I need to send our logo for some screen printing and they want an eps file with vector lines. Te instruction they give me doesn’t work. I have saved them as photoshop eps files, then opened them in illustrator, and they look ok. When I place them into a blank illustrator document they look horrible.
I use Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10.
Dave Crone, on February 26th, 2008 at 5:02 am Said:

Hi, im trying to open an EPS file using Corel draw and all i can see is a greyed out box with a few lines of text in it, can someboby please help me open this so i can use it in my marketing project.

Regards Dave
Laurens, on February 27th, 2008 at 4:44 am Said:

Unfortunately there are two things about the EPS file format that make this a pretty difficult issue to tackle:

EPS is not really an intermediate format that is meant for editing. Adobe Illustrator can use it in this fashion by adding lots of Illustrator-specific data in the EPS-files that it creates but that is just a clever way of using the technology.

There is also no cheap universal EPS-editing tool that can be used to open any EPS-file and edit it. There are high-end editing applications from vendors like OneVision that might pull this off but more affordable packages like Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator really only excel at handling EPS-files written by themselves. You could always try converting your file to PDF and trying to edit the PDF data.
Jim Laragy, on March 14th, 2008 at 1:15 am Said:

Hi, I’m trying to automate screening eps files before they go to the printer for things like fonts that weren’t converted to outlines, image size, colorspace not CMYK. Can anyone recommend a tool to extract/valiadte information from a eps file in a Unix scripting environment?
Brian, on March 18th, 2008 at 3:14 pm Said:

Hi I have a question. I recently purchased a vinyl cutter that will be here soon. I have some line art I made that I would like to make into vinyl decals. I have adobe ps cs2. What file format should I save these files under to use with SignGo Pro?

Just trying to get my ducks in a row before the cutter arrives.

Thanks in advance for any help!
Dave, on March 28th, 2008 at 12:39 am Said:

To View EPS Files Do this

1. Go here and install this
http://www.irfanview.net/

2. Go here and Install this
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1897&package_id=1845&release_id=417781

For Step Two Make sure you Download the file for your O.S and CPU

KTHXBYE!
Iris, on April 13th, 2008 at 3:45 am Said:

I saved my EPS logo file created in CS2 on my MAC for my client who uses Word on his PC. I tried saving it as Tiff-8 bit, and he can’t insert it. I read from above responses that I could save it down to Illustrator 8, but I don’t have the native Illustator 8 on my Mac anymore, so I won’t be able to convert it for PC user once I have saved down to 8….please instruct what to do.

Do saving my eps as pdf will solve the problem for my client? He needs the logo for high quality printing. And how about if the logo has transparency, how does a pdf addresses that on my client’s machine. Thanks much.
Iris, on April 16th, 2008 at 9:11 am Said:

my client has Word 2005, and his word can’t preview the EPS file i created in CS2 (I have saved it down to Illustrator 8). Does anyone know how to resolve this problem?

thanks.
Barry Allan, on April 17th, 2008 at 2:05 pm Said:

I am trying to load .eps files into Illustrator CS2 V.11. I am getting an error message that reads “either not enough memory or file is too complex” and loads the file in black and white. I need to extract one colour out of the CMYK file and add it as a 5th colour. The eps files are exported from ArcGIS 9.2
BETSY, on May 1st, 2008 at 11:16 am Said:

I received an artwork in jpg format from my client, however I need a vector file in ai. for printing plates processing. how can I convert jpg into ai or esp?
Thanks a lot.
Laurens, on May 2nd, 2008 at 3:31 pm Said:

You can use the outline tools from Illustrator itself to do this.
Osman, on May 14th, 2008 at 5:44 pm Said:

Hi,
If I had to submit a design (it has both images and un-rasterized texts) I did in photoshop CS2 in both EPS and PDF formats, what should be the ideal setting for each? Could you help me? Thanks…
ttss, on May 16th, 2008 at 3:18 am Said:

Hi

I have been sent an EPS file that I can open in Photoshop but I can’t open in Corel where I actually need it. I need to print it on my vinyl cutter. How can I open it or save it as curves.

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The future of the EPS file format

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65 Comments to “The EPS file format”

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