EPS opening in greyscale

[InnerFlow]

Hello,

I bought a vector logo through Shutterstoch (did that on previous occasions too) but this time this eps opens in greyscale.

Aff. Designer seems to asign this automatically.

I searched for a solution only to find they were working on it. 

Is there already a solution?

I attached the eps file to this post.

I really really need to make this work.

Many thanks for your help,

Virginie

 

shutterstock_746303764.eps

[MEB]

Hi InnerFlow,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
This is a known issue that's already logged to be looked at. I've added your file to our report and bumped it to bring it to developers attention.

[InnerFlow]

Thank you MEB is there anything I can do in meantime?

[OwainT]

I think I am having the same problem - if you look at my post. Please fix asap.

[Alfred]

12 minutes ago, OwainT said:

look at my post

 

[v_kyr]

Well the Affinity products do apply falsly always a greyscale profile to EPS files here. - Use some other EPS capable conversion software which keeps vector layers (curves) and doesn't convert to bimaps. Then convert to PDF or SVG with that software and open that instead in AD. - There are also some online converter tool for such purposes ...

• EPS-zu-PDF-Konverter
• Online PDF Konverter
• ...and so on ...

Your file as PDF ...

• shutterstock_746303764.pdf

[OwainT]

Surely Affinity should not apply a profile? I have had a break from this and it used to work fine.

[Alfred]

2 minutes ago, OwainT said:

Surely Affinity should not apply a profile?

There should be an option to turn it off (in much the same way as the user can choose not to apply a tone curve in the Develop persona in Affinity Photo).

[John Rostron]

14 minutes ago, Alfred said:

There should be an option to turn it off (in much the same way as the user can choose not to apply a tone curve in the Develop persona in Affinity Photo).

I agree. I do not use EPS, but when I load an unprofiled 1-bit tiff into Affinity Photo, it profiles it as an 8-bit RGB image!

John

[InnerFlow]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

Well the Affinity products do apply falsly always a greyscale profile to EPS files here. - Use some other EPS capable conversion software which keeps vector layers (curves) and doesn't convert to bimaps. Then convert to PDF or SVG with that software and open that instead in AD. - There are also some online converter tool for such purposes ...

• EPS-zu-PDF-Konverter
• Online PDF Konverter
• ...and so on ...

Your file as PDF ...

• shutterstock_746303764.pdf

Thank you, I’ll try. I hope it keeps a clear background

[InnerFlow]

43 minutes ago, Alfred said:

There should be an option to turn it off (in much the same way as the user can choose not to apply a tone curve in the Develop persona in Affinity Photo).

You don’t know which setting?

[v_kyr]

10 minutes ago, InnerFlow said:

Thank you, I’ll try. I hope it keeps a clear background

You mean a transparent background (?), then look at this ...

• shutterstock_transbkg.afdesign

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, Alfred said:

There should be an option to turn it off (in much the same way as the user can choose not to apply a tone curve in the Develop persona in Affinity Photo).

 

1 hour ago, InnerFlow said:

You don’t know which setting?

It looks as though you misunderstood my post! I wasn’t saying that you should be able to find an existing setting; I was saying that the option doesn’t currently exist and I think it should be added.

[R C-R]

7 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Well the Affinity products do apply falsly always a greyscale profile to EPS files here.

For me in the Mac versions, it i hit or miss -- sometimes an imported eps opens in greyscale but other times it is in RGB or CMYK. Even stranger, on occasion on that opens in CMYK contains only greys ... but in the Mac Preview or QuickLook it displays colors. 

[v_kyr]

@R C-R This highly depends on parsing and interpretation of EPS files.

The overall difficulty here is, that PostScript and therefore by extension EPS, is also a programming language, not just a simple vector file format, so there is usually no simple way to determine which colour space(s) are used without interpreting the entire program/file. Since EPS files don't have a 'color property', they can use any of; Gray, RGB, CMYK, CIEA, CIEABC ... CIEDEFG, DeviceN or Separation, also in addition they can use any or all of these in the same file.

The following for EPS -which usually per se doesn't come along with embedded ICC-profiles- is an advice from ICC, though I'm not sure if common third party file generators and parsers do support this at all and thus do make any use of that when writing or parsing in files.

• See: B.2 Embedding ICC profiles in EPS files in the ICC spec PDF.

Quote

The two places within EPS files that embedding ICC profiles are appropriate are when associated with a screen  preview  and when associated with the page description. Embedding ICC profiles within a screen preview is necessary so that  applications using this screen preview to display a representation of the EPS page description can do so with accurate colours. Embedding ICC profiles within a page description is necessary so that sophisticated applications, such as  OPI server software, can perform colour conversions along with image replacement. For general information concerning  PostScript’s Document Structuring Conventions (DSC), the EPS file format, or specific PostScript operators, see the  PostScript Language Reference Manual. ...
...

The Affinity products when opening an EPS do apply a profile, so they can show up the file on display as a document, though mostly and strangely applying a greyscale profile here. Probably since their parser can't determine in what main color space the EPS vectors are drawn, or maybe via an profile assignment bug.

[firstdefence]

Copying the paths from Adobe Illustrator and using New from clipboard gives the correct colours etc.

Created using Copy from Adobe Illustrator and New from Clipboard in Affinity

[v_kyr]

1 minute ago, firstdefence said:

Copying the paths from Adobe Illustrator and using New from clipboard gives the correct colours etc.

Created using Copy from Adobe Illustrator and New from Clipboard in Affinity

More interesting would be to see, if there maybe is an Ai EPS export option which the Affinity products can interpret and show up the right way.

[firstdefence]

Actually I'm just assigning an sRGB profile.

[firstdefence]

The document is CMYK but regardless of the assigned profile it opens as greyscale in Affinity. You can change to RGB and it will still open as greyscale.

Saving As... an Ai file gets the correct colours when imported into Affinity.

There are a few node glitches.

[v_kyr]

Hmm then somehow Affinity doesn't handle the used color space in EPS files the right way ...

Quote

...
...
%%Pages: 1
%%DocumentNeededResources:
%%DocumentSuppliedResources: procset Adobe_AGM_Image 1.0 0
%%+ procset Adobe_CoolType_Utility_T42 1.0 0
%%+ procset Adobe_CoolType_Utility_MAKEOCF 1.23 0
%%+ procset Adobe_CoolType_Core 2.31 0
%%+ procset Adobe_AGM_Core 2.0 0
%%+ procset Adobe_AGM_Utils 1.0 0
%%DocumentFonts:
%%DocumentNeededFonts:
%%DocumentNeededFeatures:
%%DocumentSuppliedFeatures:
%%DocumentProcessColors:  Cyan Magenta Yellow
%%DocumentCustomColors:
%%CMYKCustomColor:
%%RGBCustomColor:
%%EndComments
...
...

 

Well I'm no Illustrator user, but I think Ai files define much clear color space usage definitions and/or can have embedded ICC color profiles here. - Related to Ai and EPS export I recently saw this here ...

Quote

...At Brandisty, we encourage our customers to upload both the RGB and CMYK version of their logos in EPS format. This allows us to output to any size JPG, PNG, or PDF on demand. Since we began building Brandisty we’ve noticed an important issue plaguing many designers when dealing with color spaces.

The problem happens when a designer needs to convert the CMYK version of their EPS into an RGB version, or vice versa. Vector graphics are unique in the senses that each object can have it's own color space. Because of this, it's possible to have an EPS with both CMYK and RGB colors paces which can cause problems during production! ...

• What you need to know about converting colors spaces in Adobe Illustrator

 

[R C-R]

36 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

The Affinity products when opening an EPS do apply a profile, so they can show up the file on display as a document, though mostly and strangely applying a greyscale profile here.

All that you said makes sense to me ... except that for me the "mostly" part does not seem to be true -- at least as often as not an EPS file I open in Affinity does apply a color profile & displays colors. There is no pattern to it that I can see, except that when they do display colors they typically open in the RGBA/8 format.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

There is no pattern to it that I can see, except that when they do display colors they typically open in the RGBA/8 format.

You can check and inspect with an editor what it generates itself as EPS output for certain little setup things and then see how it handles that (eat your own dog food). - When you look at it's generated output (ideally without included metadata in order to keep things smaller) ...

Quote

%!PS-Adobe-3.0 EPSF-3.0
%%HiResBoundingBox: 0 0 800 600
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 800 600
%%Creator: Serif Affinity
%LanguageLevel: 3
%%DocumentData: Clean7Bit
%%EndComments
%%BeginProlog
101 dict begin
/m/moveto
/l/lineto
/c/curveto
3{load def}repeat
%%EndProlog
gsave
 
 % Rechteck  %% A rect
   newpath
   295 544 m
   295 544 68 544 68 544 c
   68 544 68 382 68 382 c
   68 382 295 382 295 382 c
   295 382 295 544 295 544 c
   closepath
   /DeviceRGB setcolorspace
   0.895 0.146 0.146 setcolor
   eofill
 
 % Ellipse  %% An ellipse
   467.5 510 m
   502.547 510 531 479.754 531 442.5 c
   531 405.246 502.547 375 467.5 375 c
   432.453 375 404 405.246 404 442.5 c
   404 479.754 432.453 510 467.5 510 c
   closepath
   /DeviceRGB setcolorspace
   0.1 0.934 0.168 setcolor
   eofill
 
 % Abgerundetes Rechteck   %% A rounded rect
   490 260.75 m
   490 282.965 471.965 301 449.75 301 c
   449.75 301 334.25 301 334.25 301 c
   312.035 301 294 282.965 294 260.75 c
   294 260.75 294 180.25 294 180.25 c
   294 158.035 312.035 140 334.25 140 c
   334.25 140 449.75 140 449.75 140 c
   471.965 140 490 158.035 490 180.25 c
   490 180.25 490 260.75 490 260.75 c
   closepath
   /DeviceRGB setcolorspace
   0.887 0.838 0.111 setcolor
   eofill
 grestore
showpage
end

... you will see how it sets up and determines PS based colorings.

A PS interpreter would recognize whether it's a grayscale image or a color image, on a previously set color space. If nothing is defined in PS/EPS, the default is DeviceGray. In order to produce a color image, one would have to specify something like this before ...

Quote

/DeviceRGB setcolorspace
...
r g b setcolor

... or ...

Quote

/DeviceCMYK setcolorspace
...
c m y k setcolor

where color can also be set alternatively with "r g b setrgbcolor" (r,g,b = 0.0 ... 1.0) or with "g setgray" (for gray values).

To keep it short, as you can see from the above and try out by yourself, Affinity generates such output and also knows how to parse/interpret the above stuff then. - But that is simpler and cleaner generated EPS, other apps do generate EPS in a much more complex manner (like Ai for example) and then it seems the Affinity parser can have trouble to identify the used color space in such EPS files or misinterprets something else there or assumes no specified color space and uses the default (aka DeviceGray).

[InnerFlow]

On 3/5/2019 at 4:21 PM, v_kyr said:

You mean a transparent background (?), then look at this ...

• shutterstock_transbkg.afdesign

Thank you soooo much, your version just opened in color and with a transparent background! SOOO HAPPY!

How did you do this?

[InnerFlow]

On 3/5/2019 at 5:35 PM, Alfred said:

 

It looks as though you misunderstood my post! I wasn’t saying that you should be able to find an existing setting; I was saying that the option doesn’t currently exist and I think it should be added.

Sorry I didn't understand it correctly

[InnerFlow]

Many thanks to all you guys for the help. 

I can't say I understood everything for 100% as I'm not a frequent user of Affinity or Adobe but I was able to open my file so I'm ready to go further.

Many thanks V_KYR for the file!