I was using Inkscape to open an EPS file for the past few days and everything was working fine.

Now all of the sudden the part of the image with a gradient is messed up and I find in my home directory that I have 175 files with the names ink_ext_XXXXXX_img01.png, ink_ext_XXXXXX_img02.png, etc.

I have restarted my computer, uninstalled/reinstalled Inkscape, but nothing can get it to open the file correctly as it did numerous times over the past few days

I'm wondering how could you open an eps with a gradient.
To my knowledge eps doesn't support gradients, or any transparency.
So you either had an embedded raster image with a gradient as my guess goes,
or maybe those random named ink_ext_XXXXXX_img images have to do something with it?

Is it possible to even open an eps file in Inkscape? I can save eps files in inkscape but Inkscape will not open them even though they have no gradients.

AIUI, .eps can handle gradients.

Inkscape seems to have trouble reading/writing .eps, but perhaps the version of Cairo here needs updating. (v 1.11.2).

Lazur URH wrote:I'm wondering how could you open an eps with a gradient.
To my knowledge eps doesn't support gradients, or any transparency.
So you either had an embedded raster image with a gradient as my guess goes,
or maybe those random named ink_ext_XXXXXX_img images have to do something with it?

Eps has official support for gradient (and unofficial extension for transparency)

I haven't had trouble saving in eps but from what I understand inkscape cannot save gradients in eps.