EPS Preview in Sequoia

dangerboydesign wrote:

Has anyone found a fix for not being able to preview .eps files in the current Apple OS yet? It's messed up that this is a thing. I have literally hundreds of eps files that I use for work that have been downloaded from sites like iStock and I now I have no idea what they are unless I open them. This idea that .eps file are redundant is insane. They are still used all the time. And that they are vectors for malware? I've never had an issue and I've been using them for decades. This shows how out of touch Apple is with the people who (are trying to) use their products out in the real world.

have you tried this?

No icon preview for eps-files in Monterey - Apple Community

1. Copy the "Illustrator.qlgenerator" from "/System/Library/QuickLook" to your desktop or any other folder you have read/write access to.

2. Open "Illustrator.qlgenerator" by right clicking it and select "Show package contents".

3. Open "Info.plist" in the "Contents" folder with a text editor.

4. Find the line "<string>com.adobe.illustrator.ai-image</string>"

5. Insert "<string>com.adobe.encapsulated-postscript</string>" below it with the same indentation and save the "Info.plist" file.

6. Copy "Illustrator.qlgenerator" to "/Library/QuickLook"

If you did everything right, you should now have .EPS previews back again. That's a workaround until apple fixes it in the System/Library, hopefully soon.

The solution is to stop using EPS.

Did you read through the topic linked to by leroydouglas in the very first response?

I explained in there to set up automated actions in Photoshop to convert all of your raster EPS images to TIFF or PSD. And all of your vector EPS images to .ai or PDF. For the latter, it doesn't matter which one you choose since the .ai format is a PDF (since CS2). Just with a different extension so it opens in Illustrator.

Any more recent versions of InDesign or Quark XPress will let you place a TIFF, PSD, PDF or .ai image in your documents. And all of these file types will have icon previews.

There is no advantage to EPS. None. Stop using it.

postmoboy wrote:

If you use Adobe CS you should have the Bridge app. You can view EPS thumbnails there. Not as easy as viewing straight in Finder but a decent workaround imho.

Yes, and Adobe Bridge is free: make an Adobe account, download Adobe Creative Cloud and use it to install Adobe Bridge.

Then use Adobe Bridge to display and browse .eps thumbnails.

p.s. also GraphicConverter Browser can display .eps thumbnails, and GC can also open .eps files (AFAIR GC needs either ImageMagick7 or ghostscript for .eps support).

Problem solved?

dangerboydesign wrote:

Then despite your 45 years of experience in prepress, you are doing something fundamentally wrong. This is a download page for a vector image in iStock. It's all very self-explanatory. As you can see, the options are JPG or EPS. They even explain what each file format is in basic language. I've been working in design for 30 years, so I know full well what I'm talking about. lol

There is a bigger problem here. At one point, I replied in this thread. So now, it always shows up as having new content. The "unsubscribe" feature doesn't work, so I have to keep clicking the thread with each bickering point.

You weren't wrong in your top-ranking reply:

It's still a format that is used by thousands of designers and is the only vector format supplied by all big royalty-free sites. Obviously it is still relevant. Apple loves making these sort of unilateral decisions that screw over their users.

But the problem is that Apple now has over a billion users. Those thousands of designers pretty much all use Adobe software anyway. Yes, yes, yes. I know it was different 30 years ago. I understand. Back then, Apple supported EPS. Apple even supported Photoshop file format too. If you hold down the option key while saving in Preview, you can still save as Photoshop.

But vector data is totally different. And EPS is really a pain from a developer's point of view. Apple simply doesn't want to support EPS anymore. I know - break ups are hard. But it's time to move on with your life.

I totally understand about iStock, Shutterstock, Gettystock, and anything else. I realize all of that stuff is EPS. They have 100 billion EPS files and they aren't going to convert them. But it simply doesn't matter. Apple doesn't support EPS anymore. If you still have 3rd party software that supports EPS, then fine - use that software. You aren't going to use Apple software to do that anymore. No amount of complaining is going to fix that. Your feedback reports will be ignored. Your bug reports will be ignored.

So please, can everyone just give it up and let this thread die already!

The only true solution, especially going forward is the same:

There is no advantage to EPS. None. Stop using it.

Look above at DoktorMac's EPS as displayed in Affinity Designer. Do you see any reason whatsoever why that image needs to be an EPS? I sure don't.

If you have a lot of standing EPS files, then yes, it's a fair amount of work to convert them all. But that's what Actions in Photoshop and Illustrator are for. Set up a PS action to convert all raster EPS images to PSD, TIFF, or whatever other supported raster image type you prefer. Set up an Illustrator action to convert all vector EPS images to PDF.

The most work is collecting all of your images and separating them by raster and vector. But after that, PS and Illustrator do all of the work. You can let each batch run overnight so no production time is lost.

If you use Adobe CS products then you'll likely have Bridge. I use that for EPS previews. A bit suboptimal from a designers point of view but easy enough to switch from Finder to Bridge especially if you set up favourites for your most used folders. I gave up worrying when the qlgenerator hack ceased to work. I use EPS all the time and life's too short to agonise.

If you use Adobe CS you should have the Bridge app. You can view EPS thumbnails there. Not as easy as viewing straight in Finder but a decent workaround imho.

dangerboydesign wrote:

Raster or vector makes no difference.

That is an immense difference. EPS stands for "encapsulated postscript". I assume Adobe has their own rendering code for EPS as they created postscript itself. Everyone else has to use Ghostscript, which has a crazy licensing scheme. Apple has been purging any old code that uses these kinds of licensing schemes. EPS support was one of the last to go.

I can see a preview of .svg and .ai files just fine.

Those are completely different formats from EPS. This is why raster and vector makes such a huge difference. Raster imagery is just data with different color management and compression. Each vector format is radically different and needs a completely different rendering engine. SVG is actually just an XML text file.

Apple just needs to allow ....

Get over it! It's done! Not gonna happen. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.

EPS has returned to its roots. It has always been postscript. It was always Adobe's baby. It's now Adobe's responsibility.

This all harkens back to the days of Flash Player. It had become so imbedded in the internet that it was deemed essential. The problem was that, like EPS, Flash was infested with security flaws and it seemed like Adobe was issuing updates almost every day. It was a resource hog that took up cpu cycles like there was no tomorrow.

Then Steve Jobs published a white paper laying out all the problems with Flash and banned supporting it on the iPhone. Much like the original posters here the internet flew into a rage claiming nothing would work without Flash and that Apple was going to fail miserably without it. Only a couple of years later Adobe announced the deprecation of Flash and set a deadline for web developers to remove it or face inoperability. The day came and Adobe followed through, pulled the plug, and Flash ceased to work at all over the internet. Once again users flew into a rage, even though they should have known Flash was the #1 hacking vector n the world.

The EPS format is so full of security holes that all manner of malware can easily be inserted into EPS images. As pointed out both Apple and Microsoft have stopped supporting the EPS format.

dangerboydesign wrote:

You negative folks are so aggressive...

You've been quite aggressive on your end too. This thread's been going on since October. The "EPS issue" has been going on for years before that.

I was asking if anyone had a work-around.

Are you saying that you have still not received a satisfactory answer to that question? Well let's fix that then!

The answer is "no". Absolutely no one has a workaround that will enable a vanilla macOS computer running the latest version of macOS to display a Quicklook preview of an EPS file.

You will need to find, download, and install some 3rd app that provides such a preview. Some people (including yourself?) have claimed that Adobe products do support EPS. But perhaps they don't provide Quicklook previews? Someone else mentioned Affinity products, but didn't specify if the all-important preview functionality was included.

Yes, yes, yes. I know that you want Apple to do it. And I know you want Apple to do it for free. We don't always get what we want.

In any event people need to accept the fact that Apple no longer supports EPS. You either deal with it or subscribe to Illustrator to do so.

I found the solution: Use Affinity Applications (Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher) - in all of them they can be opened and used.

Want to know why EPS is no longer being supported by Apple and Microsoft?

EPS files allow embedded scripts, which makes them a means of malicious attack for anyone who inserts an EPS file or opens a document that has an EPS file in it. In spite of previous efforts to mitigate the problem in Office documents, the EPS format continues to be a source of malicious attacks.

Microsoft drops EPS support

So it’s not only Apple doing this as you claim.

I am writing my own book, I just bought 1000 images on Shutterstock and I am completely blind and lost, finding something in thousands of EPS files that show absolutely nothing is frustrating, MacOS has always had the ability to view these files and especially on a Mac which is the computer most designers choose.

I had to install a virtual machine with Ubuntu to be able to know which file contains the image I need. Ubuntu previews the EPS just like macOS used to do.

Thanks Apple for another great decision (in case you can't tell it's sarcasm).

dangerboydesign wrote:

Designers open EPS files in Adobe programs, not in a Mac program. We just want a little thumbnail preview of the EPS rather than a file-type icon.

If Adobe opens those EPS files, then Adobe can provide a preview.

Apple doesn't natively support PSD files

Yes it does.

I can still see a thumbnail preview of one when I view the file in Finder.

That's a different format. It's a raster format. If Apple had to include Photoshop with the operating system in order to do that, then they would probably drop PSD support too.

That's all I'm asking for.

The answer is no.