Idea for reducing file size - save history actions along with raw file

[Hannibal]

Affinity Photo files are huge. I still save them together with my raw files. My raw files are approx. 50 mb and by APh files are 300-1000 Mb. Reducing size would benefit a lot.

What I would actually like to save is what I did to the photos during editing and maybe make another edit years after.

The idea is export the actions in the history rather than the entire APh file. When loading the history I'm asked for the position of the original raw file, if it isn't located in the same directory as the exported APh history file. When loaded the actions performed during the original editing are applied to the raw file once again - the APh Gb file is restored and ready for new editing/adjustments.

I'm running APh v. 2.0.3 on a Macbook pro 2018, MacOS 12.3.1 (Monterey)

[carl123]

1. Are you just doing your edits in the Develop persona or do you do other edits once you exit the Develop persona?

2. In V2 you have the option to Output your Raw file (when developing it) to Pixel, Linked or Embedded, if you output to Linked your .afphoto file will be a lot smaller. Which Output setting do you currently use?

PS Don't routinely "Save History With Document" as that just makes the .afphoto file larger

 

 

 

[Hannibal]

Thank you for your reply carl123.

1. No I mainly work in Photo persona.

2. I wasn't aware of that. A quick test with a raw file at 52 mb resulted in a 269 mb (pixel) and 0,8 mb (linked) file!!! Both before I did any other editing! nice. Final edit was 534 mb (pixel) and 270 (linked). So I more or less reduce it with the embedded raw file which in this case was approx. 50%. Not bad. I will stick to this method for now! Thank you for letting me know.

I do not save the file with the history.

Still. The file shouldn't be that big. If APh had a better macro record function, the stored file could contain the macro for adjustment and filter layers + embedded pixel layers. A grey tone mask shouldn't take up that much storage, so I still believe Affinity could reduce the file size significantly. 

[Corgi]

FYI, there was a topic last month about file sizes which touches on some of this.

Apart from saving just the history as you suggest (which seems like an intriguing option), I agree that it would be nice if there was an option to sacrifice performance for the sake of file size when embedding RAW. I already put in a feature request for that.