Huge File Size

[Mike Taylor]

I am trying to get to grips with Affinity Photo, having spent years using Photoshop. However, when I develop a photo in RAW, the saved .afphoto file of about 5000 x 3500 pixels can be as high as 192Mb. Why?

The same image at the same pixel count in jpeg would be 9mb max with no compression, and in Photoshop RW2 about 15/20Mb max. Affinity's huge file size is inhibiting me from using Affinity Photo because it eats up disc space. Am I doing something wrong, or is there a way round this other than deleting the .afphoto file?

Advice please

[Dan C]

Hi Mike Taylor,

Welcome to the forums

This has been discussed previously a few times, I recommend checking out the below threads -

I hope this helps!

[cristofa]

So I have just started using Affinity Photo after many years on Lightroom and am really shocked at the size of .afphoto files!

The two threads above are ancient - I don't know why the .afphoto files are so big, but has Affinity not managed to do something about this in the intervening 4 or 5 years,  or is this deemed acceptable?!

In Lightroom, I will likely open a .orf file (13.4MB) and work on that. I could have 3 or 4 virtual copies of different versions and the .orf remains the same size with its tiny XML buddy. I sometimes go out into Photoshop, but can normally do what I need in Lightroom. Once it's all set, I will export that to full size .jpg which will be between 6 & 8MB.

If I open the same 13.4MB .orf in Affinity Photo - do nothing beyond going to develop - do nothing and save ... the resulant .afphoto is 87MB !! How on earth ?! 

I haven't begun to carry out any serious editing on numerous layers - I dread to think how big that will make the files?

I have been learning all three Affinity programs, and really like them - but this could be a deal-breaker.  Why are AffinityPhoto files SO big?

 

later edit ... I should have researched this more thoroughly before posting this because doing just the same in Photoshop saving as .tif and .psd produced files about the same size as .afphoto!

I still don't understand why they should put on so much weight. 

It is clearly time to get an additional, monster hard drive !

Edited February 23, 2020 by cristofa
added new information

[Granddaddy]

On 2/22/2020 at 1:28 PM, cristofa said:

 I don't know why the .afphoto files are so big, but has Affinity not managed to do something about this in the intervening 4 or 5 years,  or is this deemed acceptable?!

afphoto file sizes have been discussed in numerous threads over the years, especially when APhoto Ver 1.7 produced file sizes 4 to 10 times larger than those from Ver 1.6. I called attention to the progress made by Ver 1.8 in reducing file sizes in my post at
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/108445-affinity-photo-file-sizes-much-smaller-with-ver-18/

I remain disappointed that afphoto files saved by Ver 1.7 cannot be reduced in size by processing them through Ver 1.8.  Note that all my testing has been on jpg image files only.

[In the second major forum quirk of the day, when I click on Preview to review my post then all text vanishes and a message appears "The connection was reset.". When I  Return to editing mode the text becomes visible again.]

[Kingsworthynick]

Hello

I have been using AP for about a year now (now on 1.8.2 on a mac) and generally love it. I wish it had some digital asset management system, that its raw development was non destructive and that batch processing raw files was possible but the one that has hit me today is file size.

I have just taken a 52.5mb raw file from a Nikon D810 and just hit develop (no changes) and the a-photo file is 323.7mb! Can you tell me what I am doing wrong please.

I look forward to hearing from you

Regards

Nick Sellick

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Kingsworthynick said:

Can you tell me what I am doing wrong please.

You are not really doing anything wrong. RAW files typically store image data in a compressed 12 to 14 bit per channel format optimized to minimize file size as much as possible, but it takes considerable time & computational resources to develop that into a usable image.

During development, AP does this decompression, & while it does recompress the developed image when you save it, it uses a different form of compression that is optimized to reduce the time needed to open & display the developed image, but at the expense of being far less optimized for small file size. Additionally, it includes other data in the file like mipmaps that reduce rendering time during pans & zooms & a default snapshot with several uses. These design tradeoffs increase file size dramatically, as does the conversion to 16 bit (the default) or 32 bit RAW output.

There are a few things you can do to reduce the file size; however, they involve tradeoffs as well.

One is to delete the default snapshot before saving the developed file (done in the Snapshots panel). You lose the ability to use the Undo Brush or restore to the unedited version, but this may be acceptable. Depending on the dimensions of the photo & its content, this can reduce file size by as much as 15% or more vs. the defaults.

Far more effective is before saving the developed file to open the Document > Convert Format ICC Profile menu item & change the color format to RGB/8 (8 bit RGB color). The downside of this is it destructively removes a lot of fine color variations. However, doing this & deleting the snapshot can dramatically reduce the file size, often to only 10-15% larger than the original RAW format file.

Finally, you can export to a 'flat' raster image file format like PNG or JPEG & never save the .afphoto file. This can result in files much smaller than the original RAW file, particularly if you export to JPEG at a relatively low quality setting, but of course you lose everything stored in the native .afphoto file format.

BTW, if you have never read it, the "RAW, actually" spotlight article is a great source of background info about RAW formats in general.

[cristofa]

Thank you for your clear and thorough answer to this question. And, presumably, after a bit of editing, the file size will grow again? So time to double the RAM and get some monster drives and not give it a second thought!

[Mats001]

I am quite new to Affinity Photo and saw it as a nice alternative to other RAW editors...until I discovered the file sizes it creates. This directly disqualifies it for me.

I hope I have missed a checkbox somewhere.

If not...having a program that creates file sizes much larger than the original RAW files is bad design in my world.

To be useful for people having thousands of RAW files the editing needs to be saved as an addition to the original RAW file, not as a totally new complete file.

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by Mats001

[cristofa]

Mats001 - the thing is that Affinity Photo is not a 'RAW editor' equivalent to Lightroom and Capture One. Edit in either of those programs and the RAW file remains around the same size, but export to .tif etc. and the files are huge.  RC-R provides a clear explanation above.
Affinity Photo, as far as I understand, is equivalent to Photoshop.
If you open a RAW file in Photoshop, you can't save it as RAW. If you save it as .tif (depending on the original file) it will be > 90MB. So that's similar to AP.
I have converted from many years using Lightroom to Capture One, which I much prefer now. I can carry out most of the edits I want in C1 and only go into Affinity Photo every so often. The resultant big files in that case are no big deal.

[DennisK28]

Hi, 

i am not sure if it is the same problem. 

If i process a RAW CR2 file in Develop Persona, develop this and finaly export the picture out of the Photo Persona, the jpeg file is between 30 and 40 MB large. That's much larger than the PS jpeg size. I tried jpeg best quality and Lanczos 3.

Wirh best regards 

Dennis