Designer on Mac: Faulty EPS with gradient and subtracted shape

[Toge360]

Hello!

I cannot export a project correctly as eps.

I have a shape in which another shape has been subtracted. This "final" shape has a gradient.

After the export, the EPS looks good in "Mac Preview". However, when I import the eps into Publisher, the subtracted form is missing (see attachments).

Without a gradient, it works without any problems.
Unfortunately not with a gradient.

Is this a general problem or have I set something wrong?

I am also not sure whether it is an export or an import problem.

Here are two sample images that illustrate the problem ...

[Toge360]

Okay ... when i open the eps in Illustrator and safe this file as eps again, the issue in Publisher is gone.

So it looks to me like there is an export problem in Designer.

[v_kyr]

Not sure why you deal at all with the EPS format for Affinity apps interoperations (Designer --> Publisher) here, since each Affinity app knows to deal with the others Affinity apps file formats. If you want to keep things as vectors for interoperation with other third party apps the PDF format is better suited for such tasks.

However, note the the Affinity EPS parser/writer engines won't handle gradients in a proper vector way, meaning they will be rasterize on EPS export as image parts. Though Publisher should usualy be able to import and showup if it's not exchanged as EPS.

[Toge360]

Thank you for the answer.

Most of my clients and other agencies use EPS files when it comes to sharing logos. At least that is the case here in Germany.
But as I said ... it works with the detour via Illustrator.

For me, however, it definitely looks like a bug, as I can open the eps created by Designer with other apps (such as Photoshop or Illustrator and even "Mac Preview") without the issue. Even in Designer itself, the file is displayed incorrectly when I open the eps again.

[loukash]

2 hours ago, Toge360 said:

I cannot export a project correctly as eps.

EPS? I haven't exported an EPS since I stopped using QuarkXPress 4…

2 hours ago, Toge360 said:

the EPS looks good in "Mac Preview".

Preview will auto-convert any EPS to PDF on the fly. (This is a Good Thing™!)

2 hours ago, Toge360 said:

when I import the eps into Publisher, the subtracted form is missing

It's not missing, it's just invisible because for some reason unknown to me it's got the wrong "Non-Zero" Fill Mode attribute rather that "Even-Odd".

2 hours ago, Toge360 said:

Is this a general problem

Looks like an odd (pun! ) bug to me.

2 hours ago, Toge360 said:

have I set something wrong?

As noted above as well as by @v_kyr, there's no need to use EPS whatsoever. EPS is so… last millenium technology.

2 hours ago, Toge360 said:

whether it is an export or an import problem.

Something is wrong, indeed.
Illustrator CS5 opens a similarly structured EPS from Designer just fine, whereas Affinity apps show the symptoms you're describing.

25 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Not sure why you deal at all with the EPS format for Affinity apps interoperations (Designer --> Publisher) here, since each Affinity app knows to deal with the others Affinity apps file formats.

Exactly.

@Toge360: Stay in Publisher, create any graphics in there. Should you be missing a specific tool or workflow from Designer, simply switch to the Designer persona.
That's the Affinity "killer feature". Make use of it!

[loukash]

21 minutes ago, Toge360 said:

Most of my clients and other agencies use EPS files when it comes to sharing logos. At least that is the case here in Germany.

And I hate them for that.
The first thing I do when receiving an EPS is to convert it to original vector data (if any, haha!), clean it up and place it directly into my layout as fully editable objects.

I was maintaining an InDesign Library file with all logos collected as editable InDesign paths, ready to be placed into any layout per drag'n'drop.
In Affinity there's the Assets panel which can serve the same purpose.

[loukash]

^ And even then… such vector EPS is still GREAT!
Don't let me start about those clients who are sending me like 400×400 px JPEGs as "logos"! 😭

[Toge360]

@loukash Which format do you use when a logo is to be passed on to an external company? PDF or maybe even SVG?

[loukash]

Hm… I don't do that many logos myself, but primarily it's always been PDF in the past, say, 15 years. Sometimes adding an "old school" backward compatible EPS – CS3, or even AI 10 format – for good measure, and a hi-res PNG or TIFF for stationery use in MS Word, as the latter couldn't do anything with PDF, at least from what I've been told. (Don't know if Word now can finally import PDF these days; I haven't used MS Office products since… Word 5.1 for Mac, I guess.)

When doing logo-like graphics for some magazines, originally their layouters wanted *.ai to place them in their ID layout. Now that I create them in Affinity, they're also getting full-vector PDF from me and they are fine with it.

[Toge360]

Okay, thank you! ✌️

[loukash]

34 minutes ago, loukash said:

I was maintaining an InDesign Library file with all logos collected as editable InDesign paths, ready to be placed into any layout per drag'n'drop.

Just to add:
Of course, InDesign can't crack open an EPS or a PDF. (Unlike Publisher! Ha! Take that, Schmadobe!) I had to dissect them via AI first, clean up, remove redundant paths, merge anything that could be merged, convert fonts to paths, etc., etc. Then copy the clean paths to ID via the clipboard.

[Gabe]

Hi all,

Thanks for spotting this. Issue logged. 

We do seem to treat eofill (even-odd) tag as fill(non-zero) at import. 

[GaryLearnTech]

On 5/4/2021 at 7:41 PM, loukash said:

(Don't know if Word now can finally import PDF these days; I haven't used MS Office products since… Word 5.1 for Mac, I guess.)

That reminds me of an incident that happened a couple of years back at work.  A colleague needed to make some updates to a 200-page student workbook he'd inherited from a predecessor.  Of course, he only had the PDF version and not the original Word document.  I suggested he try opening it directly into Word, just to see how good a job it made.  It chewed on the document for about a minute and then, hey-presto - he had an excellent conversion that was more than good enough to allow him to update it in Word.  He was delighted and I was impressed.

The document would have been mainly text, but would have had tables and charts and maybe the odd diagram.  That it correctly reconstructed page headers and footers sticks in my mind, since he needed to do a search and replace on, probably, the header text to begin his update.  I'm pretty sure that he would have had Word 2016 on his Windows laptop at that time, not the more up-to-date Office 365 version.

[loukash]

1 minute ago, GaryLearnTech said:

 It chewed on the document for about a minute and then, hey-presto - he had an excellent conversion that was more than good enough to allow him to update it in Word.

That's interesting and actually amazing, but not what I meant: There was a time not that long ago – like, say, a decade – when MS Word apparently wasn't capable to place a simple PDF graphic as a floating or inline object. At least that's what my Windows using clients would let me know after sending them such PDFs. Hence I would export the graphics as PNG or even – yuck! – BMP to let them use it inside office documents.

[GaryLearnTech]

4 hours ago, loukash said:

but not what I meant

Ah, yes, of course!  Obviously, I did a quick test of what you really meant and found that it seems to work happily using the latest desktop Mac version (v16.48).  I'd assume the Windows equivalent will also support the placing of PDF's too.  I don't know when this was introduced.