: AI vs EPS vs SVG What's the technical difference? I'm interested in switching from Illustrator to Inkscape and would prefer to work exclusively with SVG, but is this going to be a problem for

@Goswami567

As for the file types, SVG is (as stated above) more of a web based file type, however you can always save as EPS or PDF, if printing is needed, using Inkscape. Also you can save and open AI files with Inkscape, and you can open and save SVG files in Illustrator. Personally I perfer to use Inkscape, and haven't had any issues. I've seen that you commented on one of the answers that you are using vector for web, so my suggestion is to go ahead and make the switch. Inkscape is optimized for web based SVG. SVG will also integrate with other applications better; if you are video editing using Kdenlive or Openshot (both Linux), you will have the ability to use SVG for titles.

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@Yeniel278

It can not be said that AI, PDF, SVG or EPS is more capable than any of the others. Each of these formats have their own unique boons and banes.


Use AI or EPS when your in a print publishing context. SVG wont make you very happy here as SVG lacks many of the features required by print.
Use AI if you use Adobe centric workflow it simply works better.
Use SVG (or fonts) if you want to do vectors files for the web (as in not just using them in pixel images). Not because they are great but because they are your only choice.


What sets AI appart of the other formats is that AI is the only format that is native to a application. When you open a AI your guaranteed to have all features at your disposal intact. None of PDF, SVG or EPS have such guarantees, in fact there is NO single application out there to support all their features.

What sets EPS appart of the others is that its a programming language. Its great if you need to quickly do some somewhat complex transorms of data. EPS is also extremely well suited for open source publishing workflows using TeX. There are many benefits of using EPS but only for really techical reasons. One can embed javascript in SVG but the standard is a bit divided on this and it wont work in many workflows and the API is attrocious.

Then there is SVG. SVG is by far the most ambitious of these. Comparable in breadth only to PDF. In fact nothing supports the entire SVG spec. So in all cases saving to SVG is for all intents an export that is not guaranteed to be reversible after some other app has touched it. Certainly if you do simple things it does not matter but of you need to push the envelope you end up doing SVG edits by hand much like advanced EPS workflows.

Outside the format issues, you may find that working with other designers is often easier if you use adobe stack. Illustrator just has better format support when it comes to working with other graphic designers. Even if you only work with web does not mean other designers that you need to share resources with do.

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@Rivera951

There is no “versus“ here:


PDF (AI) is the modern vector graphics standard for print workflow
EPS is the legacy vector graphics standard for print workflow
SVG is the vector graphics standard for WorldWideWeb publishing.


If you only use SVG you will lose print workflow features. If you are working on a team that uses print workflow, that will be problematic.

If your whole team wants to move to a WorldWideWeb workflow, then maybe you could do that, but you would have to have a really good reason in order to make it worth it. For example, if you are only doing Web publishing and you all find the Inkscape environment to be more productive.

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@Yeniel278

AI and EPS are proprietary Adobe products. SVG is an open standard. Their features overlap, but the Adobe Illustrator file format can probably store a lot more than SVG was made to handle just like a native photoshop file is more than just a photo.

They also probably write the vector data similarly, but differently. Just like different programming languages are different.

I usually work in Illustrator and save .ai files and save a copy as SVG because I usually end up tweaking the SVG code by hand to take advantage of the use tag and make my own filters.

My Illustrator is a couple of versions old, so I don't know if it's gotten better, but I had one issue where a gradient changed once saved as an SVG. I can't remember exactly what it was, but I think I edited the gradient in a way that didn't translate to the SVG. I'm not sure if it was a limitation of Illustrator doing the conversion or if what I was doing wasn't possible in SVG.

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@Murray976

I think that .ai offers more editing/creation/metadata options, but .svg can represent any graphic image. If you want to work directly with .svg, it shouldn't be a roadblock for your teammates who want to continue using Illustrator, because Illustrator can read and write .svg files without any problem.

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