what is an .eps file format and how does it work/?
Amelia
2010-10-12 13:42:47 UTC
I need a quick rundown on what is can and can not do. I am doing a project and they just asked for .eps format of an image with alot of gradients and opacity blurs and now I am wondering if that is possible in .EPS format. Please advise
Four answers:
Toby
2010-10-12 13:50:56 UTC
EPS is a vector graphics format that's used in Adobe Illustrator. Normal graphics files, like JPG, BMP, GIF, TIF, and PNG are "raster" graphics. Each pixel of the graphic is mapped. That's why you can't make the picture bigger without it becoming all crappy: a bigger picture means more pixels, but the pixel data for a bigger picture is not there. The computer has to guess, and computers are bad at guessing.
Vector graphics are different. Instead of saying, there is a red pixel at location x,y, they are based on geometry formulas. For example, if there was a circle, vector graphics stores the data pi * r ^ 2. Now, when you make the picture bigger, the computer just changes the value of the radius, r, of the circle, and viola! You get the same quality no matter how big you make your picture because the math never changes.
2010-10-12 13:48:09 UTC
You can save a file with gradients etc as an .eps. I'm not sure what program you're using, but Adobe Illustrator and later versions of Adobe Photoshop will allow you to save your work as an .eps for sure. I'm sure wikipedia has a full list of programs that use .eps. If you want to do transparency you might have to work with clipping paths, but otherwise just general opacity changes and gradient use should work just the same as any other file type.
jplatt39
2010-10-12 14:58:50 UTC
PostScript is an interpreted page description language originally used in printers. It is quite powerful enough to do what you are talking about and is used in Illustrator AND Inkscape (in the configuration files). Here is a tutorial: