PLOTCASTER Photo to line art

SVG to EPS converter

Choose an SVG and download an EPS: the same shapes as PostScript paths, with the bounding box that tells other programs how big the drawing is.

Free, no account. The file is read by code running in your browser. It is not uploaded, and nothing about it is stored.

or drop it here, or paste. SVG code works too

How to convert an SVG to EPS

  1. Choose the SVG to convert, drop it on the box, or paste its code.
  2. Check the size and type a new width if the drawing should be larger or smaller.
  3. Look at the preview, which shows the drawing on white as the EPS holds it.
  4. Download the EPS.

What EPS is for

EPS, Encapsulated PostScript, is a drawing written in the PostScript language that printers speak, wrapped so that it can be placed inside another document. It was the standard way to hand a logo to a print shop for some thirty years, and sign makers, embroidery digitisers, screen printers and stock libraries still ask for it by name.

If nobody has asked you for an EPS, you probably want a PDF instead. PDF grew out of PostScript, keeps transparency, and opens on every device, which EPS no longer does: current versions of macOS, for one, cannot preview it.

What the file holds

  • A bounding box. The line %%BoundingBox: 0 0 W H gives the size in whole points, 72 to the inch, rounded up, and %%HiResBoundingBox gives it to a thousandth of a point. A 100 × 50 mm drawing is 284 × 142 points. The drawing is clipped to this box.
  • Paths as paths. Lines stay lines and Bézier curves stay Bézier curves (curveto). Circles and arcs become Bézier curves of 45° or less each.
  • Fills and strokes in RGB (setrgbcolor), with the even-odd or non-zero fill rule, line width, line ends and corners, mitre limit and dashes.
  • Clip paths made of shapes, written with clip.
  • Nothing else: PostScript language level 2, plain text, no fonts, no pictures, no preview image.

What changes on the way

PostScript paints solid ink and has no idea of see-through. A colour with opacity is therefore written as the solid colour it would make over white paper: black at 50% becomes mid grey. Where such a shape lay over another, the one beneath no longer shows through it. The notes beside the result count how many colours were treated this way.

As on the other vector pages here, text is left out unless it has been converted to outlines, gradients become the flat average of their stops, pattern fills are dropped, and embedded pictures, masks and filters are left out. Each is counted in the notes.

Colours stay RGB. A printer who needs CMYK or spot colours will convert the file, or you can do it in a layout program after placing the EPS.

Questions

What opens an EPS file?

Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Affinity Designer and Inkscape (with Ghostscript installed) open it for editing, and layout programs such as InDesign and Scribus place it. Ghostscript turns it into a PDF or a picture from the command line.

Why does my EPS show no preview in my file manager?

This EPS carries no embedded preview picture, and many systems no longer draw PostScript themselves. The file is still complete: open or place it in a program that reads EPS.

My logo has a transparent background. Is that kept?

Yes, in the sense that matters: nothing is painted where the SVG is empty, so the page behind shows when the EPS is placed. Only partly see-through colours are flattened to solid ones.

Is the EPS vector?

Yes. It contains path commands only, so it scales to any size without blurring, and a cutter or engraver can follow its outlines.

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