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Comment by Eric_WVGG | Hacker News Reader

> I’m now starting to see warnings from third-party app developers that, in Sonoma, their apps will be unable to open or import EPS files, for example, as they can no longer convert them using Quartz in macOS 14. Although the impact on most of us should be very small or negligible, if you do still use EPS or PostScript at any scale, you will need to prepare a solution for continuing to do so after upgrading to Sonoma. I wish you success.

I work with dozens of graphic designers and am quite certain that zero (0) of them know this is coming.

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Do they actually deliver PS/EPS though? Based on industry standards I'm kind of assuming they all work with AI/PDF, and maybe SVG (but that's pretty specific to web rather than graphics design in general) if they're working with vector deliverables. I can't remember the last time I heard of someone voluntarily exporting to PS (and certainly not ever since PDF became an ISO standard 15 years ago)

I get asked "what format do you want this in, EPS?" maybe a couple times a year.

Some day I'd like to write a blog post about the peculiar relationship between designers/artists and technology… as a whole they seem to have an awful time moving on from the tools they were trained with.

anecdote — I was chatting with one of the most famous book cover designers in the world a few years back, he was still using Quark X-Press 4 on a Mac that ran OS X with "Rosetta" (10.6?). These people are real and are the whole reason why Adobe.

I don't think it's a training isuse. It's a "if something goes wrong with the output, it's my neck on the chopping block" issue.

There is vanishingly little value in deviating from a known-good workflow until you have a good reason to.

There's also a significant chunk of "I need to be able to open the back catalogue of customer artwork without worrying about whether something's shifted slightly." Import filters for opening legacy formats in newer software can be notoriously bad in that regard.

No, I completely disagree. The guy from that anecdote, he's a vice president of one of the largest publishers in America. Nobody's gonna say no to him. And most designers I know are independents.

Do you know the restaurant industry term mis en place? It's this practice of laying out your tools at the beginning of your work shift, so you can grab the knife or the salt or the mixing bowl without even looking. Disrupting a chef's mis en place is an great way to get stabbed.

An even modestly talented graphic designer doesn't look at their keyboard or desktop at all while they're working, they exhibit fantastic amounts of muscle memory while navigating their various screens and palettes.

They also suffer from an unfortunate lack of neural plasticity. There is no room in their day or desire for picking up new techniques, they're way more interested in the ideas they're absorbed with.

> They also suffer from an unfortunate lack of neural plasticity. There is no room in their day or desire for picking up new techniques, they're way more interested in the ideas they're absorbed with.

Don't confuse "lack of neural plasticity" with lack of tolerance for tech industry's bullshit. They most likely have a strong case to make that those updates are unnecessary, and likely making a perfectly fine workflow worse. Computers, in general, have been getting increasingly less ergonomic and less functional over time, and the decrease in ergonomics affects even the most specialized software aimed at professionals.

I get that, but it cuts both ways.

The whole "Adobe CC" thing is also tech industry bullshit, and it is far beyond many designers to even take modest steps to update their skillset.

I sometimes work with one graphic designer who delivers web design in PDFs built in Adobe InDesign and expects everything to be pixel-perfect. It's madness.

Creative people suffer from a lack of neural plasticity? Interesting…

I think neural plasticity is better allocated to the niche specific ideas they're working with than to re-learn the UX/UI some Product Manager looking for a bonus or raise or whatever, thought a good idea.

I've had to disable the new bubbles download from chrome in so many places already, even my fucking dentist couldn't produce a recipe because they couldn't find the new UI.

professionals like their tools to be reliable and not at the whims of capital greedy corps.

Printing is in this department too.

I have a friend who makes automotive decals, and he got a new (to him) large format Epson printer last year. The seller included a circa 2014 Mac Mini which has all the software installed and setup for the printer, as apparently it's painful to setup and doesn't work well with Windows.

And the friend uses CorelDRAW for making designs. When he first told me I didn't believe him that it is still around :D

Someone needs to do a "what computer scientists don't know about color" article.

Like, in CYMK is black <0,0,0,1> or <1,1,1,1>? Depends.

<1,1,1,1> exceeds the ink-limit, try <.4,.4,.4,1>

Is this a graphics designers' equivalent to the difference between 0 and -0?

No, on actual paper one is darker and more saturated than the other. Unlike RGB, CMYK is subtractive, so “all of everything” gives you black, not white.

https://www.rightbydelzer.com/standard-black-vs-rich-black

Digitally these should be equivalent. Physically, I'd assume it's just as likely that adding CMY pigments would dilute the K and make it less purely black - but, per link you shared, it seems it's the opposite, and I didn't even realize this is an actual technique. Thanks for posting!

They aren’t using water based ogments. Dilution isn’t a thing.

EPS is a vector format that I know any design-related computer from the last 20 years can open. If you’re giving a file to an unknown party through an intermediary, like for a printer, vinyl cut, etc, I don’t see why not use it. It’s never once been a problem.

Usually I provide art in EPS, PDF, and JPEG/PNG, since one of the 3 works for almost any use.

paper documents haven't significantly changed in the past forty years. consider eps feature complete

We are "technologists" and love technology. We love to argue about new features, shortcuts, new file formats etc. Artists want the tools out of the way, they are thinking about art and the end result. They will use a 50-year-old computer if they are productive at it and gets them the results they want quickly. In fact, doesn't George R R Martin use Wordstar for DOS or something like that?

People who actually use software to get work done tend to hate changes. A UI redesign means a lot of wasted time and lost money. A feature that goes away means that muscle memory is invalidated, generally for no measurable gain.

> I can't remember the last time I heard of someone voluntarily exporting to PS

you'd be amazed at what people will do. i did the initial layout for a company's product labels in Illustrator with all files saved as *ai files. after the hand off, the person taking over the tasks ran into issues. they had no idea how to use Illustrator, and re-did the entire layout in Photoshop. when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

so i can see someone trying to export as EPS because "it's vector" from something like photoshop.

Until recently I was using PostScript and EPS regularly. I'd use a PostScript program to step-and-repeat EPS artwork for a business form or raffle ticket, and apply consecutive numbers in the appropriate place. I'd then use GhostScript to render a final multi-page PDF for printing. I also used it to send artwork to an imagesetter. Yes, they're still used in some sectors, and while the RIP software we had supported PDF, I had much better control of the machine using PostScript with a PPD.

Absolutely. The standard for printing banners / logos on tables etc. at trade conferences is definitely still EPS, from my experience coordinating with conference planners in the last 3 years.

Presumably those print shops have a Photoshop license, which would mean they're unaffected by this.

It's about interoperability. Many more apps import and/or export EPS than proprietary AI. and many of them did it using built-in macOS means.

In this sense EPS is more like SVG, but print friendly and less prone to misinterpreting

This was more relevant before CC but I still tend to include EPS in exports as a fallback option.

Well I exported to ps this morning, since I used the pstricks package in latex.

It is the best way I have seen to make diagrams with code, which can be very convenient.

so python takes instrument data and writes latex with pstricks, then to ps to pdf/svg/png/* to insert into whatever doc my colleagues are making

We are continually evaluating alternatives as latex is a heavy dependency, but nothing works as well, yet.

and even more importantly it has worked for 10 years and likely will work for the next 50 years with exactly the same code.

I have worked in graphic design for nearly 20 years, and I doubt anyone will actually miss this at scale.

If you're working with EPS, you are working in specific non-Apple applications that work with EPS. You're in InDesign or Illustrator, neither of which use the system libraries for EPS parsing.

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