Affinity Assets Shared Between Programs (Publisher, Photo, Designer)

[terry6422000]

Hello...couldn't find the answer to my question so asking here for help. How do you make assets that are mutually compatible between programs available to all three programs without having to install the assets under each program? 

If not possible...this should be an update - If I have an asset installed under Affinity Photo and it's compatible with Affinity Designer (all version 1.9) then it should be automatically available to the other programs.

[walt.farrell]

35 minutes ago, terry6422000 said:

How do you make assets that are mutually compatible between programs available to all three programs without having to install the assets under each program? 

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums, Terry.

You don't. The applications do not support sharing data that way.

35 minutes ago, terry6422000 said:

If not possible...this should be an update - If I have an asset installed under Affinity Photo and it's compatible with Affinity Designer (all version 1.9) then it should be automatically available to the other programs.

Requests for functional enhancements should be posted in the Feature Requests & Suggestions section of the forums. That's where Serif expects to find them, and that's where they look for them. You'll probably find several such suggestions there already, and you could agree with one of them. Or if you can't find one, you can post your own.

[terry6422000]

Walt,

Thank you...I'll check feature requests and suggestions. Just hate to have to install the same asset three times :).

Terry

[walt.farrell]

You're welcome.

There is a way you can simplify the installation. For your own assets, you can embed the Assets in a document, save it, and open the document in another application.

[terry6422000]

Walt,

Thank you...I was hoping the assets bought through the Affinity Store/connected user account settings could be installed once and available to all three programs. 

ATB,

Terry

[walt.farrell]

6 minutes ago, terry6422000 said:

I was hoping the assets bought through the Affinity Store/connected user account settings could be installed once and available to all three programs. 

You're welcome. And no, they can't.

They can be downloaded once (if you do it yourself) but then you must install them 3 times. Or they can be automatically downloaded and installed 3 times, which saves some effort on your part at the cost of more network traffic.

Also, some of the Asset packs are huge, and the Assets panel will work more slowly with them installed. Also, as the Assets are maintained in one file, assets.propcol, which is a fragile implementation. So you may find it preferrable not to install them as Assets, but rather to manually download the zip file of the JPG images, and use File > Place when you need one of them in a project.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, walt.farrell said:

…some of the Asset packs are huge, and the Assets panel will work more slowly with them installed. Also, as the Assets are maintained in one file, assets.propcol, which is a fragile implementation. So you may find it preferrable not to install them as Assets, but rather to manually download the zip file of the JPG images, and use File > Place when you need one of them in a project.

Ooh, thanks for the tip! 

[Joachim_L]

On 2/17/2021 at 2:19 AM, walt.farrell said:

For your own assets, you can embed the Assets in a document, save it, and open the document in another application.

If you have all three installed and you use primarily APu, the assets of APu are also available in the other Personas.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Joachim_L

[R C-R]

5 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

Also, as the Assets are maintained in one file, assets.propcol, which is a fragile implementation.

It would be even more fragile if all the apps shared the same assets.propcol file -- any problem in one app that damaged that file would cause problems in the others as well.

Saving each asset in its own individual user domain file is not without its drawbacks either, whether or not those files are shared across multiple apps. If nothing else, the increased file system overhead for what could be hundreds of individual files could be substantial; there are OS limits on how many files can be open per app; & each app would also need to maintain some sort of thumbnail file to display assets, categories, etc. in its panel.

[walt.farrell]

5 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Saving each asset in its own individual user domain file is not without its drawbacks either,

I would not suggest individual files for each asset, but individual files for each asset category might be a good compromise.

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I would not suggest individual files for each asset, but individual files for each asset category might be a good compromise.

Possibly, but it still would have to perform well if there are dozens of categories. As it is, it looks like the propcol files are probably binary encoded in some way that makes it possible to read any needed part quickly & efficiently ... but I am just guessing about that.