Affinity Designer taking up outrageous amounts of space

[Bees]

Right now my iCloud won’t backup, and I’m giving Affinity designer dirty looks.
 

At this time, Affinity Designer claims to be taking up 146gb space while my iPad is currently 145gb full. If I search, I can find conversations I’ve had complaining affinity designer was taking up “66+GB” of my 64gb ipad. (which I outgrew - and blame the outrageous amount of space AD takes up). Even further back, I can find comments of me wailing and complaining my iCloud is was 5gb without AD but AD alone takes up 32gb. 
 

I’ve come to assume this issue has to do with the raster photos I have within my projects. I work in Procreate - screenshot - trace/modify in AD. Ideally, I would keep the original images within my projects for reference, but because this increase of file size, and the number of projects I have open at any given time - I can’t. I don’t have the attention span to check settings every little change I make, but when I clear files It’ll sometimes drop 40gb like it may have been just one bad file.

 

I’m slowly saving and removing projects, as well as deleting the raster photos within the projects - it dropped down to 132gb, and now it says it’s 181gb despite the iPad still being 145gb??? I’m so fed up. 
 

I would search the forums for previous threads, but I’m unsure how to go about it or what words to search. 
 

Help me understand. Do open files take up more space than saved files? I may save/close 1gb of files and AD may claim to have dropped 10+gb. Why is it my app claims to take up more space than it really does - despite the saved file being a few kb, or mb(with raster images)?

 

I love AD but this is the thing I hate most about it. Is there a way for me to include my reference photos without massively increasing the file size?
 

Just before hitting post, I checked again, and now it’s claiming to take up 126gb. I have not changed or modified anything between the 181gb and the 126gb screenshots. 
 

I likely have HUNDREDS of things open in Procreate - while maybe only 100 in AD. Why - even if the strange (what I assume is) false inflation is AD taking up SO much space?
 

I apologize if any of my message seems hostile. I have an unrelated issue with my brand new iPad. I have an appointment tomorrow with Apple, but I can’t get my iPad to back up because it claims my cloud doesn’t have enough space to back up despite updgrading to 200gb. I lost months of work on my previous iPad because my iCloud was too full to back up (was paying for 64gb at the time). The 64gb’s ipad is too full to boot, and crashes - and I stubbornly hadn’t upgraded my iCloud because I know AD is the main issue, and never expected to run into such issues. I just don’t want to lose more than I already have. 
 

I should add this is why I have not welcomed any other Affinity programs into my life. 
 

Feel free to move this to bugs. I don’t know, honestly. 

[Paul Mudditt]

2 hours ago, Bees said:

Right now my iCloud won’t backup, and I’m giving Affinity designer dirty looks.
 

At this time, Affinity Designer claims to be taking up 146gb space while my iPad is currently 145gb full. If I search, I can find conversations I’ve had complaining affinity designer was taking up “66+GB” of my 64gb ipad. (which I outgrew - and blame the outrageous amount of space AD takes up). Even further back, I can find comments of me wailing and complaining my iCloud is was 5gb without AD but AD alone takes up 32gb. 
 

I’ve come to assume this issue has to do with the raster photos I have within my projects. I work in Procreate - screenshot - trace/modify in AD. Ideally, I would keep the original images within my projects for reference, but because this increase of file size, and the number of projects I have open at any given time - I can’t. I don’t have the attention span to check settings every little change I make, but when I clear files It’ll sometimes drop 40gb like it may have been just one bad file.

 

I’m slowly saving and removing projects, as well as deleting the raster photos within the projects - it dropped down to 132gb, and now it says it’s 181gb despite the iPad still being 145gb??? I’m so fed up. 
 

I would search the forums for previous threads, but I’m unsure how to go about it or what words to search. 
 

Help me understand. Do open files take up more space than saved files? I may save/close 1gb of files and AD may claim to have dropped 10+gb. Why is it my app claims to take up more space than it really does - despite the saved file being a few kb, or mb(with raster images)?

 

I love AD but this is the thing I hate most about it. Is there a way for me to include my reference photos without massively increasing the file size?
 

Just before hitting post, I checked again, and now it’s claiming to take up 126gb. I have not changed or modified anything between the 181gb and the 126gb screenshots. 
 

I likely have HUNDREDS of things open in Procreate - while maybe only 100 in AD. Why - even if the strange (what I assume is) false inflation is AD taking up SO much space?
 

I apologize if any of my message seems hostile. I have an unrelated issue with my brand new iPad. I have an appointment tomorrow with Apple, but I can’t get my iPad to back up because it claims my cloud doesn’t have enough space to back up despite updgrading to 200gb. I lost months of work on my previous iPad because my iCloud was too full to back up (was paying for 64gb at the time). The 64gb’s ipad is too full to boot, and crashes - and I stubbornly hadn’t upgraded my iCloud because I know AD is the main issue, and never expected to run into such issues. I just don’t want to lose more than I already have. 
 

I should add this is why I have not welcomed any other Affinity programs into my life. 
 

Feel free to move this to bugs. I don’t know, honestly. 

1.You never mentioned your project history’s which will make each project quite large, deleting layers won’t make any difference as they will still be in the project ready for you to backtrack in time and recover them. In fact the file size could grow as you delete layers and add to the file history.
2.  You should not keep your project files open in the app. Projects are like tabs on a web browser, they are meant to be saved off, with or without project history, by default without to reduce the file size.
3. Turn on optimise photos will save as it suggests several GB. You can still download your full res versions at any time. My 40’000 plus raw photos occupy 210GB of iCloud but only 9GB on my iPad memory.
4. Your iPad is 256GB, 200GB of iCloud is not big enough, either save your projects off your iPad on external storage or consider upgrading to the 2TB. That is what I use, its a lot cheaper compared to the expense I have spend previously on external backup drives.
5. After saving all your projects to iCloud or external remember to close them all. 
6. There is a delay on the iPad re-calculating free space so  you I get not see then space freed up straight away. 
7. It is worth turning your iPad off and on or doing a forced restart occasionally to re-initialise memory.

Maybe others can add some other ideas, hope these help.

[Callum]

Hi Bees, 

Welcome to the forums,

This is currently a known issue with affinity iPad apps slowly releasing data and should hopefully be resolved soon. In the meantime can I ask how many files you have open in the main menu of the app? if you are in desperate need of the space reinstalling the app will solve this issue.

Thanks

C