Is it possible to easily store in an EPS file the page area?

[Guest]

I'm a programmer, not a graphics designer, so treat me kindly!

I have a program which creates a ton of EPS files automatically. They are fine except that when opened in Illustrator they are placed in the middle of an A4 page. They are actually 18.5mm x 18.5mm square, as specified inside the EPS file bounding boxes and as they appear on the A4 page.

My customer wants them to appear in an 18.5 x 18.5 area, not the default A4 page.

Is there any way I can set this inside the EPS file?

Or is there some other technique I can use to get these images into the correct area automatically? We tried to do a batcher which cropped, but the crop action did not seem to get recorded.

We've tried reading in the original EPS (created by my program), cropping it manually, and saving it using Illustrator to see how Illustrator saves the page size (work area size?). It DOES do it somehow but the file goes from less than 1K to more than 850K in size and is full of PS functions and data.

My original EPS is this:

%!PS-Adobe-3.0

%%BoundingBox: 0 0 53 53

%%HiResBoundingBox: 0.0 0.0 52.5 52.5

0.000000 0.000000 0.000000 1.000000 setcmykcolor

0.000000 0.000000 moveto 52.500000 52.500000 lineto stroke

1.0 1.0 moveto 51.5 1.0 lineto stroke

51.5 1.0 moveto 51.5 51.5 lineto stroke

51.5 51.5 moveto 1.0 51.5 lineto stroke

1.0 51.5 moveto 1.0 1.0 lineto stroke

/Calibri-Light findfont 4.5 scalefont setfont

4 5 moveto (HR Testo in basso) show 

4 40 moveto (HR Testo in alto) show 

showpage

%%EndDocument

As far as the graphics works it is fine, it's just the page area which I don't know how to specify...

[Doug A Roberts]

when you open a raster file directly into AI, it opens with an artboard the same size as the last document profile used. so perhaps if you create a document profile in AI that is 18.5 x 18.5, open that, then open your EPS files, that'd have the same effect.

[Guest]

EPS is not raster ...

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

Your EPS has a bounding box, but not the media size. EPS files cannot contain a media size (you're not alone with this issue).

When you save an EPS out of Illustrator, what you will get is an EPS that contains a full AI file inside. Whenever you open the EPS in Illustrator again, it doesn't use the EPS code, but the AI code.

The only way to get the media size into your file would be to save a different file format. Like PDF

converter - Ghostscript: How to convert EPS to PDF with the same page size - Stack Overflow

[Doug A Roberts]

i know, but since you're opening a file that doesn't have an artboard, i thought it might have the same effect.

[Doug A Roberts]

it does with a Photoshop EPS, if that helps.

[Guest]

"it does with a Photoshop EPS, if that helps."

That is the problem, Monika says that the .EPS saved from Illustrator is really a .AI, hence the 1K vs 800K size difference, and the huge complexity of the file saved.

[Monika Gause]

Monika says that the .EPS saved from Illustrator is really a .AI, hence the 1K vs 800K size difference, and the huge complexity of the file saved.

Most EPS saved from Illustrator have an AI file embedded, but they are not AI files.

I assume the EPS should be saved as vector content? Then you cannot save them from Photoshop as EPS.

[Guest]

I misunderstood, sorry. But clearly when Illustrator reads an EPS it looks for the embedded content, which I, as a programmer would find it hard to reproduce.

Photoshop does not help me because my client does not use it in this context, only Illustrator, and requires the vectors to remain intact...

Thanks all for the info, I've learned a lot from this simple question!

[Doug A Roberts]

i didn't mean to include photoshop in this except to say that as a photoshop EPS does not have an artboard, illustrator might behave similarly when opening your generated EPS files -- that is, the artboard size will be that of the most recently used document profile. in your case this is A4, but it could be whatever you want.

[Monika Gause]

that is, the artboard size will be that of the most recently used document profile. in your case this is A4, but it could be whatever you want.

Trouble is that the artboard size will only be included in the file when you save it either as a PDF (resp. AI) or as an EPS version bigger or equal than 10. So again only Illustrator will be able to read the media size.

[Monika Gause]

Thank you for the question.

Was interesting to discuss it at this level.

I hope you find a solution that works and would be interesting if you could keep us updated about it.

[Doug A Roberts]

i'm only trying to work out the artboard size problem. not sure what can be done with file size if anything.

[V-Silly]

I here noticed that  <xmpTPg:MaxPageSize rdf:parseType="Resource">
<stDim:w>200.000000</stDim:w>
<stDim:h>200.000000</stDim:h>
<stDim:unit>Pixels</stDim:unit>
</xmpTPg:MaxPageSize>

XMP is embedded, so in the cases where people are interested in getting some of the same features of Ai, the canvas could be at the specified size in XMP.

However, I am unable to determine the artbox offset so as to translate the art on canvas to the same point as is drawn within Illustrator.
Well, in those cases where they simply want to pad centered art, this could be used probably.
But I remember from 15 years ago, at someworkflow they were definitely putting in a clear rectangle the size of the artboard to make the EPS work with some system, probably it was to ensure the proper padding and offset natively.