Illustrator archiving question

[Mike Fisher]

Folks-

We've been saving our Adobe Illustrator files as regular Illustrator files in our archive. Is there any reason that we shouldn't save them in the archive as editable .eps files? Doesn't this cut out the step of converting the Illustrator files to .eps files?

Maybe there is a drawback that we haven't thought of?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Mike Fisher/News graphics
San Antonio Express-News

[Robb Paulson]

The main problem I've seen concerns text boxes. If I open an .eps file that a co-worker built in Illustrator, and I try to make the text boxes bigger by dragging a side, the text inside the box is skewed accordingly.

We use CS2, so this problem might have been fixed in later versions, I don't know.

[jtelford]

I'm unfamiliar with the problem Robb is referring to.

Every graphics department I've ever worked in has saved their graphics in eps format with no problems.

It does, btw, save you the effort of converting from AI files to eps, just as you suggested Mike.

The only potential drawback you might see (and I'm not certain of this because I've never bothered to check) is that eps files might be larger than regular AI files. Even if that were the case, storage memory is so incredibly cheap these days it's ridiculous and the time you save not converting from AI to eps every time you send a graphic multiplied by every member of the graphics department would more than offset the cost of the extra storage capacity.

[David]

I've had the same problem that Robb said. We use CS3 version, so this problem haven't been solved in later versions. We always save our jobs in ai format to preserve the original file and if we need, we convert to eps format. But we usually don't need the eps format.