EPS or PDF?

Hi everyone. I work for a newspaper, and everything we place on the page is EPS. Now I've suggested to our Design Dept. that we work with PDFs instead, but they have been working with EPS files long before I started at the paper, and convincing them to switch is not so easy. Like most newspapers, we occasionally run into issues with fonts, or the odd color issue. Because of this, I've suggested we move to working with PDF files, instead of doing our ads in InDesign, and saving them in EPS format. I'm sure this will also help reduce the size of our pages, and take some of the load off our already full server. So my question is this, what is the better format to us. I need something to show my team!!

The reason newspapers ask for EPS is because most of the work submitted is done in QuarkXpress. And we all know that PDF files created from Quark are troublesome. The better solution was EPS in these situations. There are other, much better solutions, but they are not available out of the box.
Although PDF is a much better workflow, you need to make sure that the people creating the files are capable of giving you good PDF files. Since you are having problems with the EPS files, I can say safely that you will also have problems with PDF files.
The best way to implement a PDF workflow would be to start converting the EPS files to PDF. This will not be that easy because the staff is not trained for this. So, there will be a need for training.
After the in-house PDF workflow is implemented, you will need to train the people submitting the files to adapt to your workflow.
You will still have the odd people who will insist on submitting EPS files, but you will be able to handle that because you set it up in the first step.
This takes a lot of money, and time, which is also money. So, the newspaper may not agree, but if you play it smart, you should be able to get them to at least try.
Good Luck.

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