Is there a macOS command line tool for converting eps or ps files to pdf?

Question

I have some eps files that I would like to convert to PDF. I used to be able to open these in Preview, but Apple has removed the ability of Preview to open EPS files in Ventura.

Answer 1

macOS has a command line pstopdf that will work with both ps and eps files.

pstopdf <filename>.ps

will produce <filename>.pdf.

man pstopdf for more details.

Answer 2

I discovered this after updating macOS yesterday. Thanks to @dmaclach’s answer, I found PostScriptToPDF by Edward Mendelson, which is a wrapper for pstopdf as an AppleScript application. This offers a few conveniences, namely: an “Open” dialog, drag & drop, and file type associations—if you associate it with .ps files in Finder (under “Open With” in the contextual menu or “Get Info” panel) then double-clicking a PostScript file will quietly convert it to PDF.

Note that PostScriptToPDF will request permission to control “System Events”, which is no cause for alarm—that’s an application provided by Apple so that AppleScript programs can perform folder actions on your behalf. In this case, it allows the option of automatically deleting the PS file after successful conversion. You can deny the request without issue if you won’t use that feature.