Update 26 October 2012: Since X11 support has been dropped from OS X you have to take some extra steps to install Inkscape on Mountain Lion. I was then able to open it directly with Inkscape and the objects were all in tact for me to change their fill and stroke to my heart’s content. All I had to do was open the EPS in Preview and Save As… PDF. Preview can open the file in a view-only mode, but you won’t be able to edit the file. If you’d like to edit the file, open Adobe Illustrator, select Open and then navigate to the EPS file. One thing Preview is quite good at is saving files in different formats. Inkscape natively supports opening or importing many different formats, such as SVG, SVGZ (gzipped SVG), PDF, EPS, and AI (Adobe Illustrator) formats. I bet loads of people view their PDFs in Preview every day with no idea of its hidden power… Everything I need is already on my computer: Preview. I realised I didn’t need extra software to convert an EPS to PDF.

I did a quick search for converting EPS files and saw several references to PDF and opening the PDF in Inkscape. Recently I needed to change the colour of an EPS image and I didn’t want to do a hack job by just filling a new colour over a bitmap versions. EPS files have their uses, for sure, but they seem to be a standard output of Adobe Illustrator, which is a bit sad, because Inkscape (the open source vector editor I use) can’t open them (without some hassle with ghostscripts or something).

Inkscape eps file