What are the best free tools for converting EPS to PDF on my Mac?

The free Skim application can open .eps files and display them. You can then save it as PDF. I just did this on Sequoia v15.0 with the Finder right-click Open With menu.

Apple has removed all of the frameworks capable of converting or displaying .eps files so unless an application developer pays for a third-party PDF library that supports .eps conversion, the functionality won't be possible on macOS Ventura or later.

Once you have Skim installed into your Applications folder, you can run the following AppleScript which will prompt for only .ps or .eps files and instantly tell Skim to save them as PDF in their original location.

Open the following in Apple's Script Editor, click the compile (hammer icon), and then run.

--skim_eps_to_pdf

-- select a Postscript or encapsulated postscript file and have Skim
-- convert it in the same location as a PDF.

use scripting additions

set theEPS to (choose file of type {"ps", "eps"}) as text

tell application "Finder"
	set ext to name extension of alias theEPS
end tell

if ext is "eps" then
	set thePDF to (text 1 thru ((offset of ".eps" in theEPS) - 1) of theEPS) & ".pdf"
else if ext is "ps" then
	set thePDF to (text 1 thru ((offset of ".ps" in theEPS) - 1) of theEPS) & ".pdf"
end if

tell application "Skim"
	activate
	set myeps to open alias theEPS
	save myeps in thePDF
	close myeps saving no
end tell
return

Tested: macOS Sequoia v15.0 with Skim v1.7.4

canadian_teacher wrote:

All we need is a strip down version of TexShop. Any eps figure can be drag over the TexShop icon to show its picture, preserving the bounding box and the capability to zoom. This should not be so difficult to create such an application as the only thing to do is to take an existing application and to remove its LaTeX capabilities. This is not as asking to create anything new. Why nobody did that in two years of complaints by hundred of frustrated users? I don't understand.

This is a huge misunderstanding!!!

You don't need a pared down TeXShop.

TeXShop is SEPARATE from TeX. The download is only some 70MB, the texlive download is some 5GB or so.

Just download the existing application. There is no need to mess with it.

You can use it without installing TeX (just not to typeset TeX or LaTeX documents, of course!).

EPS files have no media box but do have a bounding box. Unfortunately, Skim's AppleScript Page bounds, media bounds, and content bounds properties do not reveal the bounding box dimensions in the EPS. Nor does its Save command offer an argument to obey the EPS bounding box as it is saved to the PDF.

The third-party Ghostscript package has the ps2pdf tool that allows one to use this command-line syntax to force the PDF to use the EPS file's bounding box:

ps2pdf -dEPSCrop tiger.eps tiger.pdf

As I mentioned earlier, there is no ability left in macOS using any of Apple's frameworks to convert eps or ps to PDF and if you want a visual tool, it won't be developed by Apple, or by one of us. And that visual tool may not allow you to use the EPS bounding box…

You already have good suggestions., but I think some clarification is in order regarding TeXShop.

TeXShop as such does not include the TeX distribution. You can get with mactex, which packages the texlive distribution and is quite big, but you can also download just the application.

In Sonoma (or maybe that was Ventura), TeXShop still could use the deprecated system API and convert eps to pdf, but I think that these API were removed from the OS in Sequoia so TeXShop (and Skim, another long time mac application) should no longer have the capability.

Luis,

By default, TexShop v5.44 will attempt to use Apple's PDFKit without Ghostscript installed and it no longer supports eps or ps conversion, so no display of these file types. If you install Ghostscript 10.04 per etresoft's preceding link, then TeXShop v5.44 will use that to display .eps or .ps files. Just tested this on Sequoia v15.0 and it worked properly.

The OP is dead-set on converting vector .eps files to PDF, and that raises the question, how do we know that the .eps contains raster or vector content beforehand?

grep -c "/ImageType" foo.eps

if it returns 0 then it is strictly vector content and any other integer result informs that it has raster content.

Once one has Ghostscript installed (e.g. /usr/local/bin/gs), then one can also produce a PDF using the exact size of the .eps content using what I posted earlier:

ps2pdf -dEPSCrop foo.eps foo.pdf

If you are willing to use the command line, you can use the official EPS software - Ghostscript.

Download a Mac installer package from here: https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/

Note that this installer is the latest version of Ghostscript, released two days ago, and properly notarized. I don't often see open source software packaged up this well. I'm impressed.

canadian_teacher wrote:

I currently use TexShop on my Mac mini M2 under Sequoia and I have the capability to display EPS files using this application. However, TexShop was one of the first application I installed two years ago. If you are right, a new install of TexShop would miss this capability. For evident reasons, I will not do the test. Can someone confirm?

I have just tested the current version of TeXShop (5.44) on Sequoia running on a Mac Studio M1 Max.

I tried to open an eps file. It FAILED (silently): either by selecting the file in Finder and Open With->TeXShop, or by using File->Open from within the application, the file does not open.

I even downloaded an older version, 4.79, and it behaves the same way.

Also GraphicConverter 12 Browser can display .eps in Sequoia if ghostscript is installed (MacPorts seems to have installed it with ffmpeg).

This morning, TeXShop v5.46 with Ghostscript 10.04 opened and displayed several .eps on Sequoia v15.0. That is a relief, but no explanation why it would not do so on Oct 1.

Also works on Ventura 13.7 and Monterey 12.7.6.

Canvas x Draw opens .eps files...

https://www.canvasgfx.com/products/canvas-x-draw

canadian_teacher wrote:

I really need an application (with an icon) to convert eps figures to pdf. This capability was removed from Preview in Sequoia. Actually, Acrobat on Sequoia provide this capability, but this application requires a subscription and I will soon become too expensive for me. Another application, TexShop, has this capability built in for free, but this application also encapsulate LaTex, a huge component. Would it be possible for someone to build a simple and lightweight application, similar to Preview, with the capability to display ps and eps files? I would pay for that (but no subscription please).

.eps support was removed in Sonoma for security reasons. If you really want it supported, you might try this:

"And none of this changes the fact that anyone can write an EPS preview tool at any time. You want me to do it? I'll do it for you. Just e-mail me and I'll tell you where to wire the money for it."

How to fix .Ai.EPS files preview issue on… - Apple Community