Export Assets - Affinity Designer (Problem)

[R C-R]

15 hours ago, fjunk said:

And, as I now know, 2 TB is not enough, even to backup a 2 TB drive not fully being used.

It should be at least enough for a first backup. After that, it depends on how much has changed since the first backup. Note that there also are options to backup only some of the drive's content. Do this by opening the Time Machine preferences & clicking on the "Options..." button. Note as well there is a "?" button you can click on that will open the macOS user guide to a page explaining how to change the preferences.

[fjunk]

I think, if I understand right, I can do a full backup, followed by an Incremental backup, a full backup meaning, everything and an incremental backup meaning just what's changed since the last full backup which would mean subsequent backups would be smaller, more easily done, more frequently possible and take up less room than a full backup.

Haven't looked yet, and I will, but that's what I'd like to do.

A 5 TB drive should be sufficient for that purpose of a 2 TB drive, I would think (hope?).

[R C-R]

7 minutes ago, fjunk said:

I think, if I understand right, I can do a full backup, followed by an Incremental backup, a full backup meaning, everything and an incremental backup meaning just what's changed since the last full backup which would mean subsequent backups would be smaller, more easily done, more frequently possible and take up less room than a full backup.

This is exactly what Time Machine does automatically. You do not have to do anything special for that to happen.

[fjunk]

29 minutes ago, R C-R said:

This is exactly what Time Machine does automatically. You do not have to do anything special for that to happen.

Sounds good.

[fjunk]

 

On 10/23/2021 at 10:33 AM, R C-R said:

Within /Users/pharisee/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library there should be an "Application Support" folder & within that a "user" folder, so the full path name is /Users/pharisee/Library/Containers/com.seriflabs.affinitydesigner/Data/Library/Application Support/user/. It is in that folder that you should find the *.propcol & *.dat files, including one named assets.propcol, which is where the assets are stored.

Good news!

I cheated.

I checked Affinity Photos and a good amount of my Assets had been transferred there as well.

So, based on this input, I checked the same location in Affinity Photo, found the assets.propcol file (3.x GB), made a backup of the same file in Affinity Designer, just in case, and copied the assets.propcol file from Affinity Photo to Designer - that WORKED!

Something to be said for redundancy.

A good amount of my Styles exist on an iPad.  Not sure where a comparable styles file would exist on an iPad or how to access it.

Does such a file exist?  If so, where, and how to access it?

If not, I can offload everything in Styles to a Flash Drive and upload them that way. Laborious and time consuming but, if there's no other way, better to have it than not.

Now that I know where to find them, the challenge is to back them up as well.

Got a Time Machine Backup running.  

Ran everything by Apple Support.  In between I did a BigSur and Monterey update (in that order).  Asked Apple if they thought I still needed to do a default restore now that I have a Time Machine Backup.  They said maybe not. Shared with them what I shared here.

What say you?

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, fjunk said:

So, based on this input, I checked the same location in Affinity Photo, found the assets.propcol file (3.x GB), made a backup of the same file in Affinity Designer, just in case, and copied the assets.propcol file from Affinity Photo to Designer - that WORKED!

The assets.propcol files are not completely compatible across the 3 applications on the desktop, and copying them between applications is neither reliable nor supported. So, although it worked for you this time, I think you were lucky.

 

[fjunk]

I'll take it and run with it.

[thomaso]

4 hours ago, fjunk said:

assets.propcol file (3.x GB), (…) in Affinity Designer, (…) and copied the assets.propcol file from Affinity Photo to Designer - that WORKED!

Something to be said for redundancy.

To avoid this redundancy: The layout object data size of 3 GB, copied at least once into a .propcol file if added to the Asset panel, could be a reason not to work with assets for those data but with a 'normal' Affinity document instead which contains the objects on pages / artboards and gets opened if a piece of content shall be used.

[walt.farrell]

14 minutes ago, thomaso said:

but with a 'normal' Affinity document instead

Or, if the Assets that are contributing to that large size are also available as PNG or JPG files (as many Affinity Store asset packs are) just download them once, and use File > Place rather than the Assets panel.

[thomaso]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

use File > Place rather than the Assets panel.

Placed objects as linked can be useful not only for image files but also for all object type of assets that do not need to get edited and get just used as they are.

Actually it is a pity that an .afassets file can't be just opened in Affinity but requires to get imported, creating a copy as .propcol this way + requiring to get deleted again to free permanently used memory of its Affinity app.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

The assets.propcol files are not completely compatible across the 3 applications on the desktop, and copying them between applications is neither reliable nor supported.

Could you explain a bit more about how or why they are not completely compatible? The assets themselves should be usable 'as is' in any of the 3 apps, so what is it in the propcol files that would result in problems?

[fjunk]

21 minutes ago, thomaso said:

To avoid this redundancy: The layout object data size of 3 GB, copied at least once into a .propcol file if added to the Asset panel, could be a reason not to work with assets for those data but with a 'normal' Affinity document instead which contains the objects on pages / artboards and gets opened if a piece of content shall be used.

and Walt said:

Or, if the Assets that are contributing to that large size are also available as PNG or JPG files (as many Affinity Store asset packs are) just download them once, and use File > Place rather than the Assets panel.

Didn't quite understand what you said thomaso until Walt chipped in, then it made sense.

Assets seemed like a convenient place to store related images other than in various locations on the hard drive.

Duh.  Given the size of the assets file, even if I was "lucky", either way that's a lot of real estate.  Having them in an "Assets" file is storing them twice.
So, it makes sense to free up the space by clearing them out of the Assets files.  Could result in better overall performance of the Affinity apps as well.

With Time Machine Backups in place now, it's less of a necessity if things go wrong as the files are now being backed up.  Had been wanting to get to that for some time.  Finding the right sized disk and getting it setup for the backup was the problem.  I've now got two 5 TB disks, but one is a USB C Ultra, the other is USB.  Needless to say, the USB C is faster.

Currently, I'm bouncing files back and forth between the Vector programs on my system: Inkscape / Amadine / VectorStyler as well as SuperVectorizerPro (for conversions - Inkscape too).  Just got done converting all the Amadine Libraries to Assets.  That's not such a big hit as they're all SVG.  Even so, had to re-convert them after saving in Amadine, because they imported as bitmap, even though exported as "SVG".  Not sure why that happened.  Brought into Inkscape, then into VectorStyler and converted them to "curves".  That seemed to work - odd.

If one program did it all, I'd only use one.

Think I'm just about back to normal.

 

 

[fjunk]

21 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Could you explain a bit more about how or why they are not completely compatible?

Yeah, I'm interested in this too.

[fjunk]

25 minutes ago, thomaso said:

Placed objects as linked can be useful not only for image files but also for all object type of assets that do not need to get edited and get just used as they are.

I seldom leave them "as they are".  Who, except the Goth, the Grunge, and the Church of Satan want black hearts?

[walt.farrell]

23 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Could you explain a bit more about how or why they are not completely compatible? The assets themselves should be usable 'as is' in any of the 3 apps, so what is it in the propcol files that would result in problems?

I don't know what the internal file differences are, only that I have experienced issues copying assets.propcol to a different application (even with both at the same release level), and another user has had a similar experience. When the issue has manifested, the symptoms were loss of all assets except the factory default set and possibly those installed via My Accounts, and then possible application failures after that.

[R C-R]

2 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

I don't know what the internal file differences are, only that I have experienced issues copying assets.propcol to a different application (even with both at the same release level), and another user has had a similar experience. When the issue has manifested, the symptoms were loss of all assets except the factory default set and possibly those installed via My Accounts, and then possible application failures after that.

Have you eliminated any other possible source of these issues besides copying the assets file from one app to another? I assume you tried this while neither app was open, right?

[fjunk]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Have you eliminated any other possible source of these issues besides copying the assets file from one app to another? I assume you tried this while neither app was open, right?

Speaking for myself, Affinity Photo was open.  I was copying to Affinity Designer.  Affinity Designer was closed.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Have you eliminated any other possible source of these issues besides copying the assets file from one app to another? I assume you tried this while neither app was open, right?

Of course. I also repeated the test several times.

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, fjunk said:

Speaking for myself, Affinity Photo was open.  I was copying to Affinity Designer.  Affinity Designer was closed.

Have you experienced any new or different issues in either app since you did the copy?

If not, I wonder if the issue(s) Walt mentioned might be confined to the Windows versions.

[fjunk]

I'm playing with it now to see if any issues resurface.
 

In between, my body said, SLEEP!

So I did.  

I'll let you know in a few days after I try a few things.

[fjunk]

On 10/30/2021 at 6:28 PM, fjunk said:

I'll let you know in a few days after I try a few things.

A few days later...

Here's what "Grunge Textures" - Claudia Phoenyx looks like (should):
 

and, here's what it looks like after being copied over from Affinity Photo into Designer (via propcol file):

If it looks a little "off", that's because, these are the styles from her "Jeans" Texture file.

Apparently, they got (more than) a little mismatched after being pulled over.

I might try reinstalling them individually to see if it makes a difference.

I might try backing these up first just in case I don't have a backup of these as they should
be individually.  Some of my styles are mis mashes from Procreate / Photoshop, or just images pulled together. 
So I have something to draw from in trying to recreate them. Some I created from scratch or by right click "Save as Style".

This really isn't for the faint of heart or the technologically illiterate.

If you're going to attempt this at all, as a last resort, proceed with caution.