Exporting eps files from InDesign as the InDesign page size.

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
September 11, 2022
4 replies
540 views

I'd like to export a 20-page, 4x9 inch document as 20 separate eps files to provide a vendor for glass etching.

The issue is, that when I open the exported eps files, they appear on an 8.5x11 art board. I need them to appear on a 4x9 artboard like the InDesign document.

Is there a setting to make this happen? I'm not able to locate it.

Many thanks.
Renee

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How to

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L

Laubender

Community Expert

@rchronister said: "The issue is, that when I open the exported eps files, they appear on an 8.5x11 art board."

Where exactly do you open the exported EPS files?

The viewing app could or could not read out the highres bounding box size of the exported EPS. See code below.

Open the EPS in a text editor and look up the PostScript code near the top of the file. You'll see if 4 x 9 inches are written to the code in PostScript Points. 4 x 72 and 9 x 72 that is. Look for:

%%BoundingBox: 0 0 288 648
%%HiResBoundingBox: 0 0 288 648
%%CropBox: 0 0 288 648

InDesign will export the page size with the EPS.

Or the page size with bleed if you enable the bleed option in the export dialog.

So if you export a page to EPS the EPS actually contains the page size.

The reading app is responsible to read out and interpret the values for BoundingBox, HiResBoundingBox and CropBox.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender
( Adobe Community Professional )

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

This is normal behaviour. EPS files do NOT contain page size information, so when you open it in a program (like Illustrator), it will use that program's default page size, usually letter.

EPSs are meant to be placed, so all they have is a bounding box dimension. e.g., if you placed this eps into a document, you will see the object is 4"x9". That being said, if you do open such an EPS, you will see there will be one "box" that is 4" x 9". What you can do, is select that box and alter your Illustrator artboard size to match. Your vendor should have experienced this by now (this has only been a thing for 35 years) and should know what to do.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

While this may be a very specialized process that demands EPS files, consider that EPS is a largely obsolete format, which is part of the reason you're having trouble controlling the export process.

The most general replacement for EPS is PDF, which is in many ways a more fully encapsulated Postscript/EPS document and is handled by many printing and intermediate processes the same way as EPS.

Ask your etcher if they can accept PDF files, and if so, in what format and standard. If they do, it will greatly simplify your job and possibly give you more options getting work to this unusual medium.

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