Participant

Answered

Unable to preview .eps files in Finder on macOS

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
February 4, 2022
19 replies
90274 views

After upgrading to Monterey on my Imac all of my .eps files stopped showing the preview in the finder. This is a huge problem, has this happened to anyone else? Any idea on a fix?

Correct answer miss-charlotte

Updated to correct final file location:

This in link below worked for me in Monterey/Ventura.

Copy the "Illustrator.qlgenerator" from "/System/Library/QuickLook" to your desktop or any other folder you have read/write access to.
Open "Illustrator.qlgenerator" by right clicking it and select "Show package contents".
Open "Info.plist" in the "Contents" folder with a text editor.
Find the line "<string>com.adobe.illustrator.ai-image</string>"
Insert "<string>com.adobe.encapsulated-postscript</string>" below it with the same indentation and save the "Info.plist" file and Save.
Copy "Illustrator.qlgenerator" to "Mac HD/Library/QuickLook" .

(https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/qkkvbr/esp_file_preview_gone/)

Show previous replies

L

Leane Wells

Participant

I'd like to know why are we having to be sleuth programmers for an App and OS we've paid plenty for? And why after several years now, is this non-preview for EPS files not fixed?! I don't have time for this crap. HUGE mistake, whoever made a decision to eliminate whatever it is people are fixing and updating, in their hidden library! HUGE effing mistake.

Monika Gause

Community Expert

You didn't pay for the operating system.

Apple took EPS previews away from you, so you'd have to complain to them.

JPAhonen

Participating Frequently

Here's possibly the best workaround when this "Quicklook Plist Fix" doesn't work:

Ever since I upgraded to Monterey none of the EPS files has shown any thumbnails. I have tried adding that silly code to the Plist-file and done exactly as others have told me here but none of it fixed the issue on my M1 Mac Mini. So I finally had enough. I decided to clean install macOS Monterey so that I can wipe out any "deeper system errors".

After a clean install, all AI-files show thumbnails again (I belive AI thumbnails stopped showing for me when I tried adjusting that Plist-file), but still EPS files show blank thumbnails. Since I'm now so done playing this stupid game with EPS files, I decided to convert them all to AI format, and that was actually a super easy and straightforward process. Here's how you can do it too.

Simply open Illustrator and any file on it. Then open the Actions panel and create a custom action that simply saves the file in AI format and then closes that particular file. After this, you will need to create two folders on the Desktop; one with the EPS files you want to convert and a second where the reformatted AI files will go.

Now on that Actions window, click that tiny three bars icon at the top right corner, and at the very bottom of the list, you will see "Batch" button. Click that one and simply select your newly created action, choose source folder and export folders. Then hit okay. Now Illustrator will open any files on that first folder and save them as AI file to that second folder and you can just sit and watch.

From now on you can simply just copy-paste all EPS files to that one folder and then simply run a batch action from Illustrator and all files will show up as AI files to that second folder. Voila!

This is really the only solution I have found working for me, and since AI is the primary format for all of my work anyway, I decided that changing formats was the smartest fix to all of this. I don't want to mess up with QuickLook Plist file yet again since it caused other issues with Finder and hence I had to do a clean install. With this batch action, you can just let Illustrator do all the work for you. However, I do recommend doing the conversions in smaller batches. This way you don't overload Illustrator by exporting hundreds of images at a time.

So this is how I solved this issue. Considering how Apple works these days I would not hold my breath that they will bring EPS thumbnails back so having everything in AI format might be the best way to go forwards.

M

miss-charlotte

Inspiring

Sorry to hear you went through all that for not. Good idea on the Batch action. I do receive more .ai formats vs .eps these days. Going forward I'll stick with .ai formats.

M

miss-charlotteCorrect answer

Inspiring

Updated to correct final file location:

This in link below worked for me in Monterey/Ventura.

Copy the "Illustrator.qlgenerator" from "/System/Library/QuickLook" to your desktop or any other folder you have read/write access to.
Open "Illustrator.qlgenerator" by right clicking it and select "Show package contents".
Open "Info.plist" in the "Contents" folder with a text editor.
Find the line "<string>com.adobe.illustrator.ai-image</string>"
Insert "<string>com.adobe.encapsulated-postscript</string>" below it with the same indentation and save the "Info.plist" file and Save.
Copy "Illustrator.qlgenerator" to "Mac HD/Library/QuickLook" .

(https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/qkkvbr/esp_file_preview_gone/)

JPAhonen

Participating Frequently

I have done exacly this on my M1 Mac Mini and it just does't work for me. I don't know why.

M

miss-charlotte

Inspiring

I restarted my system after that, not sure if that matters.

Anubhav M

Community Manager

Hello @jenniferk47645559,

Sorry to hear about this experience. As suggested by Marliton, this is something that macOS's Finder application controls. As a workaround, try using Bridge for managing your files, as suggested by Gnor. This way, you will be able to preview not just EPS files but native PSD, AI, INDD, and Adobe PDF files as well.

Kindly update this thread if you need further assistance. We'd be happy to help.

Thanks,

Anubhav

JPAhonen

Participating Frequently

I would prefer not to use Bridge but I might have to start using it since there seems to be no other solution. The sad part is that macOS Finder used to show EPS and AI file preview thumbnails but something went wrong with the last two macOS releases and those thumbnails no longer show up. And Apple doesn't seem to care to fix this. This is still something I feel Adobe should try to get Apple to fix since this is a huge loss for content creators. It's a big step backwards.

D

David23065539enz7

Participant

I don't want to use bridge either so I found a work around. I downloaded a file name changer and searched for all my eps files. I changed the extensions to .ai and can now preview them all. hope this helps.

G

gnor

Participant

I guess they assume that everyone loves and uses Adobe Bridge.
Personally, I don't.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

Not saying this is the case here, but in my experience, most CC users that don't like Bridge don't know its full capabilities.

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

B

B.L.D.

Participant

lol, no David. It's bloated and slow.

J

jo64175922

Participant

you can select the eps file in the Finder then 'space bar' preview the file.

That's all I got.

Cheers

JPAhonen

Participating Frequently

I'm struggling with this one too. Neither AI nor EPS files show thumbnails anymore on Finder on my M1 Mac Mini. This is extremely frustrating since I have hundreds of EPS files and I can't navigate through them anymore with ease. I think this issue is with Apple but I think Adobe should really make Apple fix this ASAP. This is a serious bug affecting a lot of creative people at the moment who work with Illustrator files. With older MacOS there were no issues showing EPS or AI thumbnails but the latest versions of macOS just screw up everything. I mean I cannot even quick preview EPS files right now since the space bar method simply does not work. The only way to view files is pretty much to drag them to the Preview app and view it there. But that is a just ridiculous workaround in 2022.

And at the same time, Apple/Adobe could you also introduce first page thumbnails for Indesign files too on macOS? Too much to ask!?!

T

tracyc475

Participant

My workaround for this was to go to Photoshop, File, Scripts, Image Processor, and save all files as jpg. It runs automatically and does so pretty quickly. This allows you to preview all of the eps files as jpgs so you can determine which image you would like to use in your layout. Hope this helps!

Ton Frederiks

Community Expert

See:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/after-installation-of-monterey-no-more-eps-previews/m-p/12544684#M299794

jenniferk47645559Author

Participant

Thank you for your reply, but that's not the issue... I've tried everything but it's just .eps files and it happened right after I installed the new Mac OS Monterey... I'll keep searching.

T

Test Screen Name

Legend

This is one of the "improvements" in Monterey. I don't know why Apple killed EPS previews, but they did. It does not seem to be an accident or a bug, but a deliberate change.