Hi everyone, I’m new here, I found the board yesterday. I did a search for all the terms I could think of (and on google too) but couldn’t find the answer.
I am getting a bachelor’s in graphic design so I have all the Adobe products installed with my student subscription. I am wondering why my .eps files do not show as a thumbnail in Windows 11 file explorer? I have tried Irfanview and all the other “viewer” apps, Adobe Bridge etc, and nothing works. I just want to see the thumbnails like I do with .ps .svg or any of the image file types.
I have already went into the options and set it to show thumbnails instead of icons in file explorer. Please let me know if you have found a solution to this, it’s driving me insane installing and uninstalling software that doesn’t work. Thank you!
Are you talking about Illustrator .eps files?
First, that’s an archaic file format and is generally avoided these days because it does not support transparency (and does all kinds of horrible things to files that do have transparency.)
It is an encapsulated Postscript file. Neither Mac nor Windows are set up to read Postscript for thumbnails any more. I see .eps files as icons too and I’m on a mac. You need a viewer that can read them. I’ve seen a few mentioned online, but not for .eps.
I don’t have a recommendation. I don’t see .eps files enough these days to warrant the hassle.
Can you see thumbs of the other Adobe file types? That used to be a problem on Windows machines as well.
Thank you! so much for the info. I don’t save my own files as .eps (yes Illustrator format) but I had downloaded some images I need for a project and they are in eps format only. Since they are in eps format I guess that tells me the files I downloaded are OLD. Good to know since my college doesn’t teach us anything! It’s online and we pretty much teach ourselves. It gets frustrating to have to learn these things outside of school. What do you recommend? Opening the eps file and saving them in a different, better format? *Edited to add: yes I can see all other file formats thumbnails. It takes a second to actually “load” the thumbnails for svg but at least I can see and pick what I need.
I’m not a Windows user, so I’m unfamiliar with how it previews things. I also don’t encounter EPS files much anymore other than when I download vector files from stock sites.
EPS files are a bundled up files containing all kinds off stuff from bitmap to vector data, along with a postscript header and footer than enables them to pass through a RIP. At least that was their original purpose if I remember correctly.
As a result, an operating system would need to render all the miscellaneous stuff that might be in the EPS file, which they don’t do.
It’s always been possible to save EPS files with or without thumbnail previews, which used to be a way to make the file a bit smaller when bandwidth was much more limited than today. As PrintDriver said, even recent Mac OS updates no longer show the EPS thumbnail preview/icon — even when the thumbnail is embedded into the file.
As far as I know, the only reason that this format is still supported is that the stock sites are hanging onto it for some reason.
I receive .eps files all the time. It can be a little annoying sometimes when you’re searching for something, but if you practice consistent and good file naming habits and organization it can make it a little easier. I rarely run into this problem though because I basically end up opening them up in illustrator right away for the project and save all assets as either .pdf or .svg depending on the clients needs.