You may have seen that I included an SSL graphic in my post yesterday, Securing Web Sites Often Requires Finding Insecure Elements. It was a stock vector graphic I got from iStock. In the ZIP file I downloaded were two files, a JPG (obviously a bitmap) and an EPS. Both of those files were imported into CorelDRAW X6 and you’ll see the results in the graphic below.

The JPG file worked perfectly given the limitations of JPG files. It is a bitmap and I wanted a vector that I could edit. Also JPG doesn’t support transparency so it has the undesired white box. If nothing else, it is a good reference for how the graphic should look.

While there were no errors when importing the EPS file, it is quite different visually from the JPG file. In short, I’d consider it a failure. When I looked at it closer, I found there was absolutely no way it could even be edited to be acceptable.

So if I were going strictly by the files provided by iStock, I’d be quite upset. Neither of them were usable as they were provided to me. Thankfully I have a very expensive conversion tool by the name of Adobe Illustrator CS6. With Illustrator, I opened the EPS file and saved it in AI format (CS3 flavor with no compression).

On the right of my example is the result of importing the AI file. While it wasn’t perfect, it looks pretty good. The only flaws I’ve found are the “shadows” which are rendered as a series of black objects with varying levels of transparency. Unfortunately the transparency isn’t rendered as it was designed.

At least I can easily delete those black objects or simply edit their transparency until it is just right. I do plan to use this graphic in other ways so I probably will spend some time editing the graphic to get the exact colors and effects that I desire.