Affinity Publisher crashes while creating a Photobook PDF because it uses too much RAM?

[Robert P]

I have created two identical books, one with photos linked and one with photos embedded. You will see from the attached spreadsheet that in both cases the RAM usage rises by much more than the file size of each photo added and that the embedded file rises even faster. After the Master template is set up, the RAM usage is 603MB, but by the time I add 10 photos amounting to only 182MB over 10 pages RAM usage goes up to 2115MB in the linked file and 2964MB in the embedded book. The saved file sizes are only 2.6MB and 238MB respectively, so RAM usage is about 10 times the file size.

The really odd thing, though, is that when I restart the program and reopen each file the RAM usage is 2199MB in the linked file (more than the size at closing) but only 638MB in the embedded file. In addition, the linked file takes an eternity to open, whereas the embedded file opens very quickly.

During the testing I closed the program completely before working with the other book. If I merely close one book with the program staying open and open the other book, not all of the RAM is released from the first book. For instance, if I close the linked book and then open the embedded book, the RAM usage sits at 1242MB - almost double the usage if I restart the program and then open the file.

There is obviously a lot of memory wastage. Until there is a fix I shall embed all photos and regularly close and restart the program.

RAM usage.xlsx