EPS (Encapsulated PostScript)

EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is Adobe's vector format from the late 1980s, built on the PostScript page description language. It was conceived as an "embeddable picture" for layout work: the file carries its own BoundingBox and drops into an InDesign or QuarkXPress page as a finished object. Over three decades EPS became the common language of prepress — almost any print shop accepts it.

Maps are exported to EPS when they are meant to be printed rather than viewed on screen: a directions map in a booklet, a site plan on a poster, an inset in a travel guide, a background for a label. Vectors scale without any loss of quality, so the same file works for a business card and for a banner alike.

The output is a single .eps file: a map page assembled in a QGIS layout and translated into PostScript Level 3 through Ghostscript. Raster elements are rendered at 300 DPI, the default sheet is A4 landscape. PostScript has no transparency, so semi-transparent fills are converted in advance into the equivalent opaque color over the page background — the picture matches what you saw on screen, and the vector stays a vector.

Color arrives in the model the layout was built in, that is, in RGB. Conversion to CMYK, applying a print profile and setting up overprint happen later in prepress — in Illustrator, InDesign or Scribus, tuned to a particular print shop and paper.