No icon preview for eps-files in Sonoma

With Sonoma, Apple has removed all means to convert .ps/.eps files to PDF, or display them in the Finder. All Apple frameworks that once offered this capability to developers were also removed. The free Skim PDF reader v1.16.13 and later that worked in Ventura to convert .ps/.eps to PDF, no will not do this on Sonoma because it depends on those Apple frameworks and will refuse to open these file types now.

TexShop v5.18 still opens .ps/.eps as PDF and I expect that will end shortly too. GraphicConverter, any of the Affinity product line, or the free GIMP image editor can open these files, but the days of seeing them in the Finder is gone.

Another free option is the XnView MP graphics tool that if you click on a folder containing .ps/.eps files it will open a light table effect in a window with details of each file beneath it. Double-clicking on any image will open it in a separate viewer. However, it won't load all .eps files for some reason and that may be Apple's framework issue again.

No one in the modern prepress industry wants to work with EPS anymore. It's an almost obsolete file format. Here's good information found online. Most of which I already knew, but saves me the time or writing it:

Here are the major issues with EPS.

(1) EPS doesn't support ICC Color Management. Everything is either DeviceCMYK, DeviceGray, or DeviceRGB.

(2) EPS doesn't support live transparency. All content with live transparency, including clipped images, must be flattened potentially causing text and vector objects involved with transparency to be rasterized at some resolution which probably won't match the resolution of your output device (which you probably know at the time of content creation anyway). If text and vector overlap with transparency, text may be converted to outlines. Text in the resultant PDF will not be fully searchable or be able to be “touched-up” due to this flattening process. And the text won't render at highest quality!

(3) The results of (1) and (2) are device resolution and color space dependent files with the possibility of terrible artifacts when either displaying or printing. There is no recovery from this!

(4) PDF is much more compact and compressed than EPS, but with potentially higher fidelity.

(5) There are no good tools for displaying EPS. PDF is ubiquitous for display and print. Adobe Reader is free!

Note however, that if one is generating PDF for any type of content, a parallel file should be maintained in the file's native format. In other words, if a vector diagram is created in Illustrator, save the file as an Illustrator file and save a copy as a PDF/X-4 file!

Heck, even though printed material is CMYK (plus some possible spot colors), a lot of users don't even work with CMYK images anymore. Or more precisely, the advertising agencies who put together brochures, flyers, catalogues, etc. only use their RGB photos when building their InDesign or Quark documents, and let their vendor do the CMYK conversions on their RIPs. Then they only have to track one master image that can be used both on their web site and for print.

An Illustrator PDF isn't actually even a PDF. It's still a native .ai file with a .pdf extension. This started somewhere around Illustrator version 12 (called CS2). Go ahead, take any PDF and change the extension to .ai. It will then open in Illustrator as if were always an Illustrator file. Same thing in the other direction. Take any .ai file made from about CS2 of Illustrator forward and change the extension to .pdf. It will then open in Acrobat, Preview, etc. as if it were always a PDF.

In short, forget EPS. It's basically dead. Use an action in Illustrator to run all of your EPS files automatically to a PDF.

Eps is no longer supported at all in Sonoma. Read me for Sonoma advises to convert your eps to pdf or other more modern vector format before upgrading.

Did you try booting into safemode? That might help since it clears out corrupt system caches and diagnoses misc other problems then fixes them.

Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support (English)

flaore wrote:

Thanks for the explanation, Sonoma is horrible. I work with the computer and I have more than 3,000 eps files in my photo archive, I can't open and convert them all just to preview, I will go back to the Ventura system

Look here as an example of one of several open source tools to work with postscript files (and convert them in bulk to pdf). https://mendelson.org/postscripttopdf.html

As Kurt Lang pointed out, you are better off with pdf files anyway, going forward.

I am with FLAORE! I have twenty times your 3,000 eps files. This has taken a lot of agencies (big ones) by surprise.

I'm fine with the advice to change to pdf as a primary workflow endpoint, but I'd hate to be a content manager at Getty, iStock, Shutterstock or any other established stock agency. All of their vector assets (and I mean all of them) are distrubuted as eps. Today, I spoke with brand managers at Landor, Lippincott and Siegel-Gale to ask them where they stand on .eps and it is (as of today 12/23/27) their primary vector format for all files distributed to clients. I similarly contacted Coca-Cola, Pepperidge Farm and Campbell's to ask their brand managers what files they send to plants for manufacturing (already knowing the answer). All of them said 'eps.' They send PDF files too, but asterisk them as secondary for plants who work only in PDF workflows. So, I'm dubious about this all-in love for PDF. And claiming searchability of the internal text of a PDF is a factor for a 'graphic' file like a logo, background or illustration is absurd. Text-heavy documents are created in InDesign not Illustrator -- at least at the professional level. Landor -- as a note -- has advised their design departments to move toward a Bridge-based workflow for the teams working on brand assets and brand standards components. They issued that notification in May of this year. A friend at Ogilvy said they have an army of interns running scripts to open their eps files, capture the screen, compress to icon size and insert into the info panel so they can preserve a Finder-level visual workflow.

[Edited by Moderator]

Procedures change over time. That's been a constant in the computer era.

Remember when GIFs dominated virtually all online images? When was the last time you saw one that wasn't animated? JPEG and later, PNG, replaced static images.

YouTube spent over a year translating every one of their videos to MP4 so they could run directly under HTML5 and ditch any reliance on Flash, Shockwave or any other older video playback add-ons that would no longer be allowed to run in a browser.

When I started doing work for my main client (recently retired), everything was shot digitally. My job was to take those and do any requested retouching, convert them to CMYK and then save them as an .eps. Usually with a clipping path. That was standard for about 10 years. Then they didn't want .eps files anymore, or anything converted to CMYK. For the next 15 years, everything was left as RGB, outlined as necessary, then the background dropped to transparent. All images were saved as a single, floating layer PSD. And that's how they went into their InDesign documents. All vector art that used to be EPS was converted to PDF or left as an Illustrator .ai file, and then were also used directly in InDesign that way.

Another major strike against EPS files is they've become a vector for malware. They're encapsulated data, so any attempt to do anything with them requires reading the contents. That means any embedded malware must also be read and run before you know it's there.

I just went through the Affinity Designer 2 2.4 settings and reviewed the export (PDF/X-4) settings where the export preview image shows the checkerboard background for alpha channel in the PDF. Yet, it exports with a white background again, and neither Quick Look nor Preview reveal any transparent background, but GC 12 below does show it.

GIMP 2.10.36 fails to convert the .eps when opened… but the trusty GraphicConverter 12 opened it just fine.

I know how you would like to see the .ps/.eps icons in the Finder but that capability is now gone for good. Apple started this process in Ventura and that foretold the future for these file formats.

Going back to Ventura will not solve this as Ventura 13.6.3 shows plain white Finder icons for .ps/.eps files and Quick Look will not display them.

One can export .eps files to PDF/X-4 using Affinity Designer 2, though one loses transparency in the process:

i just spent 3 hours dealing with this! Ridiculous waste of time.

I just bought a new @apple MacBook pro and it runs Sonoma 14.3. I use @AdobeCloud suite and I cannot preview .eps files in finder.

Apple says it's not on them since it's an Adobe product but with my last computer which I ran Ventura they fixed the preview issue with the apple care support.

Adobe says it's not on them and the 2nd level support just went into Photoshop and Illustrator and my preview still doesn't work.

Adobe is recommending to downgrade to Ventura but that makes absolutely no sense. Why can't these two companies play nicely together??? Especially, since most designers, photographers, illustrators use Adobe products on Macs.

Who has the fix???

I have gone round and round with #applecare and #adobe and neither are offering any assistance for a work-around.

I have so many .eps files and it's too time-intensive to open each up or bring them into another program to see if graphic is the right one for my project.

Interestingly, Adobe Illustrator and PNG files are shown in the preview.

Let's hope they figure out a solution so we can all move forward in our design projects.

[Edited by Moderator]

Hmm, I have Affinity Designer 2.x, but haven't needed to try and convert any EPS files. I'm not even sure I could dig one up at this point to test.

But it's odd transparency is lost since PDF/X-4 supports transparency. I would have to guess that's a function Affinity hasn't built into Designer yet.

Now I feel the need to test. 🙂