EPS stands for Encapsulated PostScript. Files of this format have an .eps extension. The file extension was developed by Adobe Systems in 1992. It is a standard format used to import and export a single page of formatted text, images and graphics. EPS files can be placed with another Postscript file. Commonly used in the publishing industry, an advantage of .EPS is that they are Operating System independent, meaning that the file type can be used to send image and graphics to another recipient regardless of OS. Most EPS files contain a bitmap preview. This allows applications that cannot interpret postscript code to render a low resolution version of the file.
An EPS file must contain at least two DSC (Document Structuring Conventions) header comments. One that confirms that the file conforms to Version 3.0 of the EPS format and also a Bounding Box comment. The Bounding Box comment defines the values that indicate the size of the image to the application reading the file. A number of optional DSC comments can be added depending on the nature of the EPS. For example the %%Begin(End)Preview denotes the bitmap preview section of the file. Another common optional comment is the %%Extensions: comment. This is used to define language extension requirements. The comments section is also used to denote specific font requirements. Note that including multiple extensions limits the portability of the file and therefore where possible an EPS file should be self contained.
Associated programs
Adobe Acrobat Adobe Illustrator Adobe Photoshop CorelDRAW Microsoft Digital Image Editor QuarkXPress
PNG pronounced ping is a format for storing bitmapped (raster) images on computers. It was created originally to replace the GIF file format when it was announced that the companies who created the GIF format wanted royalties. PNG uses indexed colors and lossless compression (like a .GIF file), but without those copyright limitations; it cannot be animated like a GIF image.
PNG images are in many ways better than .GIF as they also include an 8-bit transparency channel, which allows the colors in the image to fade from opaque to transparent; GIF images only support fully opaque or fully transparent pixels. PNG supports palettes of 24-bit RGB colors, RGB images or greyscale or RGB images. PNG was intended to be able to transfer images on the Internet, not professional graphics, and so does not support other colour spaces (such as CMYK).
Associated programs
Apple Preview Corel Paint Shop Pro GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program (LINUX) Microsoft Windows Photo Gallery Viewer Safari
