“Clipping path limit reached for TIFF preview" message in Illustrator CC 2018

[Enthusiastic_Eclipse0D44]

I was trying to save my design as an EPS with these settings:

But, around 80 - 85% of the saving process, I'm getting this warning message:

• I've not used any clipping paths in my design. But I've used a drop shadow effect. Is that the cause?
• Will this affect the EPS file in any bad way?
• How can I avoid this issue?

[Michael Bullo]

This doesn't address your exact question but is there any particular reason why you are saving this as an EPS file? Would an Illustrator or PDF file work? If so you could bypass your problem altogether.

[Enthusiastic_Eclipse0D44]

Yeah, I need it as an EPS for uploading to certain stock image websites.

[Michael Bullo]

Some quick Googling suggests that some people were able to solve this issue by turning off the preview in the EPS Options dialogue box. I have no personal experience with this problem so I'm not recommending this. Just something you could try.

[Enthusiastic_Eclipse0D44]

That did help, but will it affect the EPS in any bad way? Since I'm uploading this to stock sites, I need to ensure that.

[Michael Bullo]

Good to hear.

I'll let others comment on whether you might have any unintended consequences from doing this.

You could also check any guidelines available from the Stock sites you are uploading to.

[poedjidesign]

Make Selection you vector and make simply,

with object selected Go to Object - Path - Simplify, curve precicion 100% and 180% angle threshold. try to save as EPS.  

[shabanaabdulbaseer]

hey. i am facing this issue. can you please guide me how to get out of it?

[Monika Gause]

Please tell us about your design.

Does it need to be saved as an EPS?

[shabanaabdulbaseer]

yeah. i am trying to save it in eps format but this pop up is coming again and again

[Monika Gause]

What's in the file? Which functions did you use in the file? How large is the file?

Does it really need to be an EPS? It's an outdated file format that hasn't seen an update in ages.

[shabanaabdulbaseer]

this file contain the auto traced vectors. yeah it's mandatory to save it  in eps format. i have to upload it in stock webs. is there any permanent solution for this as this is the first time i am facing this issue? how to overcome this?

[Monika Gause]

It's new to me that you can upload autotraced artwork to stock sites.

Are you sure that the image trace has been expanded?

The raster images are completely gone?

How many paths are there in the file? Autotrace tends to create thousands.

[shabanaabdulbaseer]

the image has been expanded properly. raster images are gone. i am not sure about paths. this is a new thing to me. it's been more than 2 years that i have been using autotracing but not faced these kinda issue.

[shabanaabdulbaseer]

does this effect my file?

[Monika Gause]

When you select all and then go to Window > Document info and in the panel menu select "Objects". Then how many anchor points and paths does Illustrator tell you?

[shabanaabdulbaseer]

its 4433

[Bobby Henderson]

Does the artwork contain any transparency effects? EPS does not support transparency. Advanced gradients could cause issues too, particular if saving down to earlier versions of EPS.

[Monika Gause]

That's quite a lot. But typical for autotraced images. And it will probably cause your image not to be accepted by the stock website anyway.

[shabanaabdulbaseer]

how to overcome this issue? can you help me?

[Monika Gause]

Get acquainted with the Image Trace settings and use them to reduce the number of paths. And when creating artwork for vector stock websites, just don't use Autotrace. 

[DaveyJones013 · Accepted solution]

I know this is an old post, but this is for anyone still getting this warning. I work in a print shop. I get this warning all of the time. Especially when embedding images and using effects like drop shadow. To this day, I have never noticed any negative effects from this warning as far as how files print, cut, or are editable later. However, what this DOES affect is your preview image when using the file online. If you want it to go away, simply change "preview format" to none when saving. This may hurt your thumbnail previews, but thats about it. 

[Joji5EDA · Accepted solution]

Had this problem when my background was transparent. When I was saving the same file with an opaque background fill it worked

[defaultoq250sfebsbu · Accepted solution]

The simplest way to counter this issue is to make the artwork smaller by scaling it down by may be 50%. Hope this helps.