File growing in size on save without apparent reason

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Callum said:

As I mentioned this information is something the app will eventually throwaway if you continue to work on the file but this will only happen using File > Save As and not File > Save as has been previously mentioned in this thread. 

But also, File > Save should immediately recover the wasted space when it totals more than 25% of the file size, shouldn't it? (I think Serif staff have said that previously.)

In this case, the pixel layer in that file has these characteristics:

But if I restore the initial Snapshot, I see this:

So, with 15.21 MP, and 4 channels, there is much more pixel data there in the Snapshot than the OP realized. Just counting that data, we have 58 MB (megabytes, not megapixels) if I've done the calculations correctly. Plus there may be more for the ICC profile and metadata.

I may not have done that calculation properly, though, as the entire .afphoto file is only about 57 MB in size. I've redone the calculation, and it came out the same, so I'm not sure what's going on there.

Still, upon deleting the Snapshot and doing a Save, the file size decreased only to 49 MB. Why didn't the Save reduce it, given how much waste there should be at that point?

 

 

[Old Bruce]

7 hours ago, Dalibor Puljiz said:

Do this:

1. Open the attached file (55.8 MB) - single layer with nothing else - no adjustments, no filters, no masks, no history (supposedly) - as simple as possible
2. Try [Save As] - it cuts down size to 48.1 MB
3. Paste that layer to a brand new 1250x687 template, save it - the size is now correct 2.53 MB

 

5 hours ago, Dalibor Puljiz said:

I got bunch of large CMYK JPGs i needed to adjust. My workflow in 90% of the cases went like this:

1. Crop down to 1250x687
2. Convert color profile down to RGB/8
3. Adjust colors if necessary using adjustments layers
4. Export back to jpg
5. [Save As] the adopted file

Couldn't be easier, but it adds like 18-45 MB, unjustified, per file.

You have a CMYK 3425 x 4440 pixel snapshot which adds to the file size.

I do not like CMYK JPEGs. They are an abomination. Nothing good ever comes from working with them.

[Callum]

Hi All, I've asked a member of our dev team to take a look at this I'll update this thread once I have some info from them.

Thanks
C

[Dalibor Puljiz]

44 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

 

You have a CMYK 3425 x 4440 pixel snapshot which adds to the file size.

I do not like CMYK JPEGs. They are an abomination. Nothing good ever comes from working with them.

True. I never denied that.

The thing is - once I apply a destructive action (change color space, raster&trim, flatten, especially to delete the initial snapshot etc.) and then do the [Save] I don't expect that my file should contain any history garbage leftovers before that destructive action. And yet it does.

There are millions of ways to save the increments, out of which Affinity is offering wonderful options to save the History and Snapshots. However, if I choose not to proceed with these options, I expect the program to obey it. That's why I consider it an undesired behavior and hence the bug.

I hope this explanation makes sense.

[Dalibor Puljiz]

23 minutes ago, Callum said:

Hi All, I've asked a member of our dev team to take a look at this I'll update this thread once I have some info from them.

Thank you sir. Highly appreciated.

 

[Callum]

I'm still waiting for someone to take a look at this unfortunately, hopefully it wont be too long.

[bt1138]

On 6/23/2022 at 12:11 PM, walt.farrell said:

For smallest size, you need to use Save As, and a new file name. Otherwise the file will grow until the application decides to "compress" it to remove the wasted space.

Could you elaborate on   "the file will grow until the application decides to "compress" it"?

What / why is happening here? When will APhoto decide to make my file smaller.

When I first started using APhoto, I thought the files sizes were a little large, and then moved on, life is short, etc. Now, I'm wondering about it again...

[walt.farrell]

8 hours ago, bt1138 said:

What / why is happening here? When will APhoto decide to make my file smaller.

For processing efficiency and speed, when you make changes to an existing Affinity file (.afphoto, .afdesign, .afpub) the application does not rewrite the complete file when you do a Save. Instead, it records the changes at the end of the file, which makes the file larger, but takes much less data transfer than rewriting the full file.

Eventually, this results in a lot of wasted space, and at some point, when the amount wasted is big enough (25% of the total size, perhaps?), a Save will perform a complete rewrite, removing the wasted space.

8 hours ago, bt1138 said:

When I first started using APhoto, I thought the files sizes were a little large,

We would need to know more details, such as the kind of file you started with, and the kind of file you saved, to comment on that without guessing.

[SandraS]

I am in the process of switching from Photoshop to Affinity, ONLY because of cost. I can manage with Affinity: on balance, it does everything I need. I scan images on an Epson 12000XL graphic arts scanner at 1200 dpi TIFs and the images are large to start with - between 500MB and 1GB. I work on multiple images simultaneously which take weeks to edit, and so space is IMPORTANT. 

The .afp file sizes rapidly expand (2 to 3 GB and maybe more per image). I understand from these threads that this is the way Affinity operates - optimizing loading speed over space. I understand that to keep the files at a manageable size I need to "save as" after every work session; either overwrite or save as a new name and delete the old one. But this seems to me to be highly cumbersome. A work-around, not a feature.

1. How is it that photoshop doesn't need to do this?

2. If I mess with this cumbersome workaround every time, does this in any way diminish the resolution/quality of the image as I work on it? 

3. If I continually delete the snap shot, (haven't tried that yet and not sure how much difference it would make) would THAT in any way diminish the resolution/quality of the image?

If the answers to 2 and 3 above are NO (which I suspect is the case), then why can't affinity provide an alternative way of saving that is more like PS, in that the file doesn't grow? I mean, it grew in PS somewhat with layers etc but not to the ballooning extent of affinity.

I want to make this work, because I can't go back to PS (subscription = extortion???) but I don't have limitless space. 

THX.

[carl123]

6 hours ago, SandraS said:

I need to "save as" after every work session; either overwrite or save as a new name

I don't think save as to the same file name works to reduce the file size, (it would be nice if it did!) I think you have to do it to a new file name

 

7 hours ago, SandraS said:

1. How is it that photoshop doesn't need to do this?

2. If I mess with this cumbersome workaround every time, does this in any way diminish the resolution/quality of the image as I work on it? 

3. If I continually delete the snap shot, (haven't tried that yet and not sure how much difference it would make) would THAT in any way diminish the resolution/quality of the image?

1. Unknown

2. No

3. No

7 hours ago, SandraS said:

If I continually delete the snap shot

It would be nice if we just had the option not to create an initial snapshot.