PaoloT Posted July 8, 2022 Share Posted July 8, 2022 Hi, In a remote past I used to export drawings to the EPS format. Later, when switching from FreeHand to Illustrator, I went for the AI format, that InDesign could immediately integrate. In recent times, I've switched from Illustrator to AfDesigner. I'm currently saving to the PDF format, that I was considering as a viable replacement of the AI one. PDF, as I had to discover, is not a perfect equivalent of AI, for example, in how layers are not correctly preserved. I was thinking to return to the EPS format. Despite its prospected demise, it seems it is still alive and well supported. The advantage of saving drawings in EPS instead of PDF would be to differentiate between PDF as a final-output format, and EPS, as a working format. Is there a reason to prefer the one or the other? Is EPS support in the Affinity suite good and up-to-date? Or is it a deprecated one? Paolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted July 8, 2022 Share Posted July 8, 2022 1 minute ago, PaoloT said: I was thinking to return to the EPS format. Despite its prospected demise... Don't. Just don't. Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 Affinity Designer 2.4.1 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaoloT Posted July 8, 2022 Author Share Posted July 8, 2022 6 minutes ago, Old Bruce said: Don't. Just don't. Do you mean: a) "you shouldn't even think for a moment the EPS format will disappear!", or b) "don't even touch it!" ? Paolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Bruce Posted July 8, 2022 Share Posted July 8, 2022 33 minutes ago, PaoloT said: "don't even touch it!" ? PaoloT 1 Quote Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 Affinity Designer 2.4.1 | Affinity Photo 2.4.1 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 | Beta versions as they appear. I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaoloT Posted July 8, 2022 Author Share Posted July 8, 2022 Poor EPS, after so many years of great service… Paolo Old Bruce 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeW Posted July 8, 2022 Share Posted July 8, 2022 Other than .eps not supporting transparency on individual objects, there is nothing wrong with them. They are generally smaller in kb and faster to generate a pdf. Despite people who advocate not using them, I do when they are appropriate. PaoloT 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walt.farrell Posted July 8, 2022 Share Posted July 8, 2022 1 hour ago, PaoloT said: I'm currently saving to the PDF format, that I was considering as a viable replacement of the AI one. PDF, as I had to discover, is not a perfect equivalent of AI, for example, in how layers are not correctly preserved. I was thinking to return to the EPS format. I have no problem preserving Layers in PDF (but check the More options in Export). And in my brief testing, EPS did not preserve them at all. So I don't find layer preservation to be a good reason for going back to EPS PaoloT 1 Quote -- Walt Designer, Photo, and Publisher V1 and V2 at latest retail and beta releases PC: Desktop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 64GB memory, AMD Ryzen 9 5900 12-Core @ 3.00 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Laptop: Windows 11 Pro, version 23H2, 32GB memory, Intel Core i7-10750H @ 2.60GHz, Intel UHD Graphics Comet Lake GT2 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Laptop GPU. iPad: iPad Pro M1, 12.9": iPadOS 17.4.1, Apple Pencil 2, Magic Keyboard Mac: 2023 M2 MacBook Air 15", 16GB memory, macOS Sonoma 14.4.1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted July 8, 2022 Share Posted July 8, 2022 1 hour ago, PaoloT said: Is EPS support in the Affinity suite good and up-to-date? Or is it a deprecated one? EPS still works well when imported and exported in apps that fully support EPS. Affinity apps, sadly, do not, so they lack support for e.g. embedded fonts, spot colors and overprinting settings. PaoloT 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted July 8, 2022 Share Posted July 8, 2022 32 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: I have no problem preserving Layers in PDF Only the root level is preserved (not complex structures with sub-layers), and they are read and imported back only by Affinity apps (and possibly by some other, but not e.g. by Illustrator), and even there just limited to the root. The "Layer" option in the PDF Export is related to saving "Layer" layers as PDF OCG (optional content group) layers, that are a totally different thing than Illustrator native layers. Illustrator does not read in OCG layers (even if it can create them), and Affinity created OCG layers are not global as per document, but page-specific. When exporting from Designer, this is not so obvious but it is when exported from Publisher. UPDATE: One good example of usefulness of EPS (and I am not talking about Illustrator EPS that is a proprietary format), even in context of Affinity apps, are vector patterns, which Affinity apps do not support, not even when saved as part of a PDF stream (in which they will be rasterized when opened in Affinity apps). However, when they are saved as EPS files (e.g. from CorelDRAW), they can also be read and opened for editing as vectors by Affinity apps. PaoloT 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaoloT Posted July 8, 2022 Author Share Posted July 8, 2022 4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said: I have no problem preserving Layers in PDF When saving an Illustrator CS6 file as an editable PDF, layers are different in Designer. The layers are still there, but each individual object in it may be moved to a different layer. In the end, it is as if layers were not preserved even in a PDF. I've no idea if this is still the same with Illustrator CC. Paolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaoloT Posted July 14, 2022 Author Share Posted July 14, 2022 I have recently exported from Affinity Designer a PDF (for export) file mostly made of text. Both text and images appear extremely scaled when placed in an InDesign (CS6 or CC2021) document, with "Typical" as the view quality. Everything is fine when switching to "High Quality". What I see in Typical quality, with the PDF exported from AfDesigner, is much worse than when placing an Illustrator CS6 [AI] file. Do you think there is something to adjust in the export parameters in AfDesigner, or is it just an InDesign thing? Paolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lacerto Posted July 14, 2022 Share Posted July 14, 2022 2 hours ago, PaoloT said: is much worse than when placing an Illustrator CS6 file. I just tested this exporting from Illustrator to PDF with default Illustrator settings and compared the same document exported from Publisher but could not see any difference so both files seem a bit jagged at Typical setting when placed in InDesign. For fast display, this is probably also preferred behavior(?) -- only showing high quality when requested. I wonder if Illustrator caused text to become vectors as that might show sharper on screen than text also when using "Typical" view quality? Or did you mean placing an Illustrator EPS or Illustrator AI file compared to PDF? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaoloT Posted July 14, 2022 Author Share Posted July 14, 2022 2 hours ago, lacerto said: Or did you mean placing an Illustrator EPS or Illustrator AI file compared to PDF? I see I omitted this information, sorry. Yes, the comparison is between Illustrator --> AI and AfDesigner --> PDF (for export). Paolo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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