Illustrator EPS files are fat.

Jimlad

Jimlad

Well-Known Member
I don't mean FAT32 or some such nonsense. I mean literally fat. Huge. Bloated beyond reason. And the wisdom of the internet hasn't granted me much insight thus far as to exactly why.

Here's an example:
test-1.png


As an AI or PDF file this image is a meagre 930k to 1mb, tops. Yet as an EPS it swells right up to 20.5MB! I can slim it down to 13.6MB by setting the preview to None, but why should it be so big anyway?

As a side question, anyone know of any advantage/disadvantage of working with an illustrator-editable PDF instead of an AI file?

Any light shed would be appreciated.
 
how are you encoding the EPS? is it a level 3 or level 2?
 
Hi Jim, can I just ask are you using many transparent or blend modes in conjunction with gradients?

Do you have any unused palette items?

Are your paths overly complicated?

Do you get any warnings in the dialogue box at the bottom when trying to save?

Did you turn off document thumbnails?
 
iirc eps is non compressed meaning bigger file sizes.

EPS also includes any functions/commands etc where as illustrator files can use a shorthand reference which is understood by illustrator.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys, apart from Typo obviously!

Here are the settings on the EPS options:
AI.gif


No transparencies or gradients at all.
Nothing much in the way of unused palette items.
Dead simple paths.
The text is an eps brought into the illustrator file. Would that have a big impact?
 
lol, take it out and save it then see how it impacts the file size.
 
I'm back! And I tried removing it Squiddy, so there were no EPS files within the AI file, the resulting EPS was still 17.7MB... this is pretty bad! Any more advice, people? Some of my EPS files are getting too big for email now, this is ridiculous.
 
Jimlad said:
the resulting EPS was still 17.7MB... this is pretty bad! Any more advice, people? Some of my EPS files are getting too big for email now, this is ridiculous.
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what email service are you using, I'm regularly sending/receiving 200mb+ files over email...
 
mcskillz said:
If someone emailed me a 200mb attachment I'd go effin' mental!
Click to expand...
different fields, my CAD work can easily go into GB file sizes so 200mb is tiny lol
 
mcskillz said:
Still - wouldnt you use a service like wetransfer.com ??
Click to expand...
off topic admittedly but no, I'd set up a folder on my website if it was massive and split the file up (split zip file) into manageable chunks. But for a couple of hundred megs I'd just send or have it sent directly... might change with (eventual) website update though :)
 
I'm on Gmail and they limit attachments to 25MB, the fascists. I've used WeTransfer before, it's a good service, but that's really not the point here. I saved the same file twice and it got bigger each time!

Practical suggestions?
 
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