Reply To: Using eps format for graphic files

Before Adobe merged with Macromedia and thereby acquired Freehand, I used to use Freehand for vector graphics. Thereafter, of course, Freehand was doomed to obsolesence — though I quite liked some of its features that have not been picked up by Illustrator. The version of Freehand I used (hadn’t updated for a while) had EPS as its standard output. Consequently, I have a number of EPS files lurking in various obscure folders on my hard drive. Occasionally one of them is the best graphic to use for a particular project and I drag it out for another brief moment of fame.

Ever since I began using Creative Suite and Freehand became obsolete, of course, Illustrator has become my app of choice for vector graphics and now there are many many more .ai files on my hard drive than .fh* files. But, as I said above, the old ones still crop up occasionally. Yes, I know I could use Illustrator to convert them all to .ai but there seems little point in doing that when InDesign still happily accepts EPS files. I have compromised by converting the ones I use most.

But I agree that EPS is now rather “stone age”, even though it was Adobe’s invention in the first place.