Incorrect color profile extracted from EPS file

[NewInBoston]

Hi, I am having a difficult time trying to get this eps to display the correct color profile. My mac thumbnail preview for the icon in the folder shows the eps file correctly, but as soon as I open it in Affinity, it is assigned some random profile and the color becomes unsaturated. I tried assigning all color profile combinations to the document to try to find that sweet spot, but none of the colors look right.

 

Here is the original JPG from the designer sent me, and the second is the eps exported to a png from within either AFfinity Designer or Photo. 

 

I should mention that the preview of the eps using macOS preview shows the eps correctly. BTW this goes on the side of a race car to explain the need for such unsaturated colors

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mac_heibu]

You can’t „extract a color profile" from an eps file, because – generally spoken – eps is postscript, and postscript can’t and doesn’t support color profiles. (Although there where certain ways to embed profiles into an eps, this isn’t supported widely. Even Illustrator ignores it.)

I’d definitely would avoid eps. The format is a last-century-format, no longer supported by its inventor since years and years, and has tons of restrictions (color profiling, transparency support, …). You really should drop eps, whereever possible and use PDF instead, which clears out all the eps shortcomings.

Your screenshots don’t really help, because we don’t know, which profiles are used to display the file (monitor profile? default profile of the application? …)

 

[NewInBoston]

3 hours ago, mac_heibu said:

You can’t „extract a color profile" from an eps file, because – generally spoken – eps is postscript, and postscript can’t and doesn’t support color profiles. (Although there where certain ways to embed profiles into an eps, this isn’t supported widely. Even Illustrator ignores it.)

I’d definitely would avoid eps. The format is a last-century-format, no longer supported by its inventor since years and years, and has tons of restrictions (color profiling, transparency support, …). You really should drop eps, whereever possible and use PDF instead, which clears out all the eps shortcomings.

Your screenshots don’t really help, because we don’t know, which profiles are used to display the file (monitor profile? default profile of the application? …)

Thanks for your reply. I was not entirely clear in my original post. To clarify, I'm just looking to change the output color to be more saturated (brighter blue), yet experimenting with every color profile in Affinity results in the 2nd picture I included which is dull colors. I'm not able to replicate the first color profile that the first image shows (brighter blues and reds)

 

However, I'll work with PDF instead, is x1/a recommended as a format?

 

Thanks!

[MattP]

Just a quick note to say that your EPS is probably being loaded as CMYK but was meant to be RGB? That means your imported Affinity document is being set to CMYK which will yield a reduced colour gamut. If you assign the document to RGB you'll be able to select the colours you were hoping for. EPS normally contains a hidden Illustrator file, so people pass each other the EPS and think 'Hey, this opens great in Illustrator, all the information is there!' and then are disappointed when they open it in other programs - unfortunately we don't have any way to read the Illustrator file format (it is a closed specification, not open to others) so we have to load the EPS file itself - and that misses out lots of information so we have to take a lot of guesses... The SVG format is a very good vector art interchange format and PDF is also good, but x1/a is an output format which is restrictive. If I had the option, I'd use SVG to transfer between applications.

[NewInBoston]

26 minutes ago, MattP said:

Just a quick note to say that your EPS is probably being loaded as CMYK but was meant to be RGB? That means your imported Affinity document is being set to CMYK which will yield a reduced colour gamut. If you assign the document to RGB you'll be able to select the colours you were hoping for. EPS normally contains a hidden Illustrator file, so people pass each other the EPS and think 'Hey, this opens great in Illustrator, all the information is there!' and then are disappointed when they open it in other programs - unfortunately we don't have any way to read the Illustrator file format (it is a closed specification, not open to others) so we have to load the EPS file itself - and that misses out lots of information so we have to take a lot of guesses... The SVG format is a very good vector art interchange format and PDF is also good, but x1/a is an output format which is restrictive. If I had the option, I'd use SVG to transfer between applications.

 

Thanks, I wasn't aware that SVG is the better option for moving files between applications. I think you are right that it is RGB. I was hoping that there was a quick way to just get the colors back to how they were without manually adjusting the gradients. It appears that there is not. macOS preview allows the eps to be opened and even extracted as a png, but no way to remove the background otherwise that solution would be perfect!

Insert other media

Anyways, thanks for your help!

[MEB]

8 minutes ago, NewInBoston said:

I was hoping that there was a quick way to just get the colors back to how they were without manually adjusting the gradients.

 

Hi NewInBoston,

There is. As Matt explained open the EPS file, go to menu File ▸ Document Setup, Colour tab and change the Colour Format dropdown from CMYK to RGB.

[NewInBoston]

17 minutes ago, MEB said:

 

There is. As Matt explained open the EPS file, go to menu File ▸ Document Setup, Colour tab and change the Colour Format dropdown from CMYK to RGB.

Hmm, perhaps I am doing something wrong because as soon as open it, even changing the color profile doesn't help once the Swop 2 color profile is assigned to when opening. Is there a way to force Affinity to open it in RGB the first time?

 

Here is the file if you'd like to take a peek!

DELETED

[MattP]

Here's the RGB Affinity version

-DELETED--

 

Rather confusingly, you need to open the EPS, go to Document Setup and go to the Colour tab, choose 'Assign' then choose 'RGB/8' for the Colour Format. If you don't have it set to Assign then it will convert your colours into the RGB colour closest to the original CMYK colour - which is not what you want, instead you're saying "Leave the colours alone, just assign the working space"

 

Incidentally, it's worth noting that I personally consider it a bug that you can't choose 'Assign' afterwards, rather than before the colour format change... I'll ask for that to be looked at...

[NewInBoston]

19 minutes ago, MattP said:

Here's the RGB Affinity version

 

Rather confusingly, you need to open the EPS, go to Document Setup and go to the Colour tab, choose 'Assign' then choose 'RGB/8' for the Colour Format. If you don't have it set to Assign then it will convert your colours into the RGB colour closest to the original CMYK colour - which is not what you want, instead you're saying "Leave the colours alone, just assign the working space"

 

Incidentally, it's worth noting that I personally consider it a bug that you can't choose 'Assign' afterwards, rather than before the colour format change... I'll ask for that to be looked at...

That worked perfectly, thanks so much! You saved me a lot of headache, and I'm wiser for it, too. Never a dull moment in graphic land. By the way, would you mind deleting the eps links in this post? The file is not mine and not sure how client feels with me posting it

 

Thanks!

 

Dang you're fast!

[MattP]

1 minute ago, NewInBoston said:

That worked perfectly, thanks so much! You saved me a lot of headache, and I'm wiser for it, too. Never a dull moment in graphic land. By the way, would you mind deleting the eps links in this post? The file is not mine and not sure how client feels with me posting it

 

Thanks!

No problems - and I deleted my .afdesign version too as you've got it now