AP overwrites 32-bit tiff with 16-bit tiff when saving

[Michael Allman]

If I load a 32-bit tiff in AP, make a trivial change (like applying an adjustment then undoing it) and save the file, AP saves it as a 16-bit tiff. This seems like a bug to me...

Is there a workaround? Image export is not viable, because I need to save over the original file, not create a new one.

I'm using AP 1.10.5.

Thank you.

[walt.farrell]

You can Export, and overwrite the original. You merely need to supply the proper file name and location, and accept the warning that you're going to overwrite it.

It would, of course, be much more convenient for it to work automatically. Personally, I prefer not to overwrite my originals like that, but if you want to I see no reason it shouldn't work so that does feel like a bug.

[NotMyFault]

8 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

You can Export, and overwrite the original.

Even if this works in this specific case, as you mentioned this is a dark bad pattern, and should be avoided under all circumstances to avoid bad patterns sneak into your „muscle memory“. It is especially dangerous as Affinity requires read access to opened files at any time. Tiffs could be (mis-used) as containers of affinity files, including linked files etc. 

Exporting over the current opened file is a good recipe for potential data loss. On top, the Windows and MacOs version differ in how files are saved or exported. On Windows, Affinity tends to create a temp file on c:drive, i could not find this on MacOs.

[NathanC]

Hi @Michael Allman,

I can confirm i've been able to replicate this issue and it has now been logged with the developers. 🙂

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Tiffs could be (mis-used) as containers of affinity files, including linked files etc. 

In that case, though, Export is required. You cannot (as far as I know) Save a TIFF file that contains Affinity layers; that's only an Export option.

[Michael Allman]

11 hours ago, NathanC said:

Hi @Michael Allman,

I can confirm i've been able to replicate this issue and it has now been logged with the developers. 🙂

Thank you. 🙂

[Michael Allman]

9 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

In that case, though, Export is required. You cannot (as far as I know) Save a TIFF file that contains Affinity layers; that's only an Export option.

I suppose if you work with affinity files directly this simplifies the situation, however afaik affinity files have no direct interoperability with anything outside the affinity ecosystem (hence my other post requesting a file format sdk so devs can start supporting it).

[walt.farrell]

33 minutes ago, Michael Allman said:

I suppose if you work with affinity files directly this simplifies the situation, however afaik affinity files have no direct interoperability with anything outside the affinity ecosystem

The same is true of TIFF files exported with Affinity Layers. Only Affinity can read them. Essentially it is a TIFF with an embedded .afphoto, similarly to Photoshop producing a TIFF with a PSD embedded.