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Originally Posted by Damo
What a coincidence! I've been asked this question twice in the last three days at work!
Yes, it seems to be a case of "old habits die hard", for two main reasons:
1. Early generation postscript RIPs needed EPSs. New rips can handle anything.
2. Early Quark Xpress only recognised clipping paths in EPSs. Nowadays, clipping paths are a breeze!
Anybody using a reasonably new RIP, and recent page layout programs, should be able to ditch their EPS workflow.
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No, old RIP's did not need EPS files. EPS files were used for a variety of reasons. Most notably were clipping paths. But also because of color management as well as prevent applications such as Quark from automatically optimizing image resolution when printing. EPS's also required that the whole image be processed which added significant processing time to complete the job. TIFF's on the other hand were much easier to deal with because they were already binary and did not require them to be processed as heavily.
It was also the case that EPS's were able to have OPI comments embedded more easily. TIFF's were a bit more complex but doable. TIFF's also were able to hold clipping paths. They have been able to for a long time, but the feature itself was never really implemented by developers until relatively recently. EPS files also have the benefit of not allowing other applications to manipulate colors via color management.
EPS's also suffered from a problem of having other EPS files placed within them, "nested EPS's" which could cause all sorts of output problems. Not all EPS's are created equally or well. This problem has pretty much eliminated itself.
Overall in general EPS's are just as effective and usable as TIFF's.
