Working with Very Very Very Large Files

[Heymrdj]

Hello,

I have a client who because of the nature of what they do often work with files in excess of 40GB yes you read it right 40-80GB files - PSB's

In Adobe CC Photoshop these files can take 10-15 minutes to open/save!!! Once open the files may have 5/6 layers, they do a bit of brush work then close them and eventually the images get printed out on a large format printer.

Pshop handles these files very very badly given the size and often crashes. I'm trying to get my client to switch to AFP but they will need a good reason to do so, will AFP handle such files any better? Will the files be better handled by AFP?

Any and all thoughts appreciated.

DJ

[walt.farrell]

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Why not install a Trial and check it?

https://affin.co/phototrial

The trial will run for 10 consecutive days from the first time you run the program after you install it.

 

 

[Komatös]

Hello and welcome to the forums, @Heymrdj

Affinity Photo will not load the files faster. The first time, in my experience, it will take even longer. Other factors are the size of the available RAM and the mass storage device (HDD/SSD/NVME) from which the files are loaded.

Without knowing how the customer machines are equipped with RAM and OS, I would assume that the memory is full and the swap is too slow.

[Heymrdj]

Hi,

Yes I'm aware of the trial... dont want to waste my clients time and money installing a trial if there is little benefit.

Re Machine specs:

Imac Retina 5k 27"

4.2Ghz i7 running 32GB of Ram and fusion drive

Radeon Pro 580 8GB

[Old Bruce]

4 minutes ago, Heymrdj said:

Yes I'm aware of the trial... dont want to waste my clients time and money installing a trial if there is little benefit.

Well none of us have these 40+GB files so we cannot advise you, I am assuming you do have access to these files and could test Affinity Photo.

[NotMyFault]

Do the math. A file using 40-80 GB storage on disk in a compressed format may require much more RAM to be loaded.

It would help if you can give some more context regarding:

• exact file type & compression method used (e.g. TIFF supports none or lossless, jpeg support lossy)
• bit depth 8 / 16
• color format RGB (3 channel + alpha), CMYK (4 channel + alpha), GRAY (1 channel + alpha)
• unsupported by Affinity Apps types like GIF (palette), 1 bit color depth used ?

The use case you are describing is a totally rare / exotic. Not testing it out yourself is a waste of time for other forums users. We could benefit from your findings.

Never the less, there are some rare reports from other users trying giga-pixel image edits with Affinity apps. I try to find them and will update my post.,

User @Barney Meyer was successful switching from PS to Affinity with files >500.000px wide.

 

[v_kyr]

Usually it would have some loading speed benefits afterwards, when converting PSB files to Affinity's native file format. - But the whole problem here will also be opening 40-80 GB sized PSB files, where one will also need the capable hardware for, aka a very huge RAM & fast SSD equiped computer at all.

[Barney Meyer]

Heymrdj, the client's hardware is too light for working with large image files, especially multilayered files. I am working with very large multiframe captures and stitching multi-gigapixel panoramas. WIndows 10x64, 64GB RAM, 1TB fast SSD, several 16TB hard drives and I'm still feeling that I need more RAM and a better processor than my AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12 core 3.8Ghz and NVIDIA GeForce RTX2080 Super, but that was all that I could purchase at the time as all those Bitcoin miners are buying up and paying  a fortune for top end hardware. I'm afraid that Imac Retina 5k 27" hardware is far too light to work with large images, especially when you start layering them.

This virtual tour is one where I follow in the footsteps of the old photographers who captured HUGE Cirkut Camera panoramas. I digitise these at the best possible resolution and the images are Gigapixel sizes. 1890-2021 Metropolitan Gas Co Tower

regds, Barney

On 1/22/2022 at 6:36 AM, NotMyFault said:

Do the math. A file using 40-80 GB storage on disk in a compressed format may require much more RAM to be loaded.

It would help if you can give some more context regarding:

• exact file type & compression method used (e.g. TIFF supports none or lossless, jpeg support lossy)
• bit depth 8 / 16
• color format RGB (3 channel + alpha), CMYK (4 channel + alpha), GRAY (1 channel + alpha)
• unsupported by Affinity Apps types like GIF (palette), 1 bit color depth used ?

The use case you are describing is a totally rare / exotic. Not testing it out yourself is a waste of time for other forums users. We could benefit from your findings.

Never the less, there are some rare reports from other users trying giga-pixel image edits with Affinity apps. I try to find them and will update my post.,

User @Barney Meyer was successful switching from PS to Affinity with files >500.000px wide.