I am looking for a good, lightweight, free or cheap to buy .eps to .pdf or .svg converter

You can obtain a Ghostscript v10.05.1 package installer via direct download and without any need for homebrew. It will install the package binaries in /usr/local/bin.

To convert name.eps to name.pdf in the Terminal:

/usr/local/bin/ps2pdf name.eps

To convert name.eps to name.pdf with higher resolution in the Terminal:

/usr/local/bin/ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress name.eps

If you install the free Inkscape v1.4.2, it has a command-line component that can go directly from .eps to .svg, or even .eps to PDF. Note that there is a separate download for the Apple Silicon (e.g. arm64) build for your MBP 14 inch.

Inkscape is a regular GUI application that installs in your /Applications folder. Internally, it also has this command-line component named inkscape. I created a bin folder in my home directory in the Terminal which I prepended to my Shell PATH statement. I then created a command-line soft link into that bin folder using this syntax:

/bin/ln -s /Applications/Inkscape.com/Contents/MacOS/inkscape ~/bin/inkscape

With that, I can now enter inkscape on the Terminal command line and the first thing you want to do is:

inkscape --help-all

And the following says use the first page, export plain svg, and export text to path:

inkscape -n 1 -l -T -o out.svg in.eps

You may need to tweak the preceding inkscape conversion line with additional switches for the desired svg output.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

TeXShop I believe is using macOS's Cocoa libraries and is just for text, I am opening vector graphics.

NO, NO, NO! It is not just for text! (Yes, it is using the libraries in the OS)

I suggest you try TeXShop. It's free, and you don't need to install TeX itself.

You can download it directly from the author's page here:

https://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/texshop/

It keeps vector data for sure.

I tested Skim with a number of files, it rasterised all of them. I want to keep them as vector files.

In the one that I tried with Skim, it also seemed to keep the vector data.

It uses Ghostscript to make the conversion.

"I have installed GraphicConverter 12 which requires the User to install HomeBrew which is necessary to install Command Line Tools for Xcode-16.4 which is necessary to Install GhostScript to do the postscript conversion."

NO! You absolutely don't need to install homebrew in order to install Command Line Tools for XCode.

Just type this line in Terminal and that's it:

xcode-select --install

Ghostscript would be my first choice too.

If you don't want a command line option, I assume Adobe Illustrator and/or Acrobat (full version) could handle EPS file too. After all, they created this problem.

Also, you could install a Ventura VM and convert them that way.

I recommend converting to PDF. While PDF is a nasty format, it's better than SVG. SVG is based on XML so it's fairly easy to create a valid SVG document, but that doesn't mean that any software is going to be able to read it. They all expect their own specific variants, which is never documented, of course. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Apple.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

Apple has removed the ability to open and convert .eps files in macOS, by removing support for PostScript since Sonoma, presumably to annoy Designers, it's favourite pass time.

Not to annoy designers – but either because they grew tired of maintaining PS/EPS support, or more likely, for security reasons.

PostScript is a full-fledged programming language, and it is possible to write malware in it (to attack, say, your printer). I do not think there has been much PS/EPS malware. Still, Microsoft turned off support for using EPS images in Office documents, first by default (in April 2017), and then completely, whether users liked it or not, beginning in May 2018.

Microsoft Support – Support for EPS images has been turned off in Office

These days, Apple seems to be placing a great deal of emphasis on security – even at the cost of convenience. While you or I might think that the risk from PS/EPS does not outweigh the inconvenience of removing support, Apple might have different priorities.

what would you convert the eps & avg files good if not rasterizing them?

I like Acorn…

https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/docs/creating__opening__and_saving_images.html

I have a few eps files, and I can open them in Skim...

and in TeXShop, as well.

If opened in TeXShop, they are automatically converted to pdf.

Are you arm wrestling with your grandson yet?

The last time I worked with EPS files was in 2009. 🤔