Humungous .afphoto file size!

[Phatman]

Why is the native Affinity Photo file size so humungous? I have a .dng file which is 26.9MB when I save it it becomes 292.5MB. The file has only 4 flat layers. It's even bigger than a .psd file. 

[sbishop58]

This not an answer but I’ve noticed this problem as well on my Mac. Reading elsewhere, the .afphoto file size is somewhat comparable to Photoshop’s .psd files.  So changing to Photoshop won’t reduce the problem.  However it makes a great deal of sense to me if Serif would enable a means to write out a file of recorded changes, maybe an .xmp, that could be applied to the original raw file.  But as it stands I’m reconsidering any further use of Affinity Photo as I can’t afford the disk space consumption. 

[Ron P.]

There's numerous posts regarding this.

Afphoto file size

[Pšenda]

On 1/25/2023 at 9:53 PM, Phatman said:

Why is the native Affinity Photo file size so humungous?

Google will also find the answer to your question:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+is+the+native+Affinity+Photo+file+size+so+humungous?+site:forum.affinity.serif.com

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, Pšenda said:

Google will also find the answer to your question:

No. It will find about 352 references to related questions. It will not find "the answer", but only lead one into doing a bunch of research to find which (if any) of those results are actually relevant.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, walt.farrell said:

It will not find "the answer"

--> 42

since it's "the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" here.  So there are chances in this case that it's reference number 42 from Google search! 😀😉

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

No. It will find about 352 references to related questions. It will not find "the answer",

No, the first link from my search led me to the attached very old thread, which compared to all the "answers" here (including yours), is far more relevant because it is from the developers themselves. But the OP can easily wait for some more well-founded information and answers, I personally prefer to look up these "answers", because that is significantly faster and more comprehensive.

 

[lphilpot]

On 1/25/2023 at 2:53 PM, Phatman said:

Why is the native Affinity Photo file size so humungous? I have a .dng file which is 26.9MB when I save it it becomes 292.5MB. The file has only 4 flat layers. It's even bigger than a .psd file. 

YMMV, but in my experience about 90% of the time I can reduce the .afphoto size by about half. It's a hassle but usually works:

1. In the original file delete the default snapshot (unless you need it, I guess).
2. Save the file to a temporary *.afphoto name, then close it.
3. Reopen that same file and save it to the "permanent" name.

To see if it worked, before you delete the temporary file compare the two .afphoto file sizes. It doesn't always work for me but 9 times out of 10 it results in a significant file size savings. I've reported this but apparently it's not been fixed since even 2.0.4 still exhibits the same behavior.

[stuartbarry]

Since Affinity Photo 2 I only use linked RAW files. If you don't make any changes that require a pixel layer (stick to layer filters and masks) the linked file is usually less than 1MB. There is a small, sidecar XMP file. An equivalent embedded RAW file can be 200MB or more. If I need to make destructive changes I tend to save as jpg, unless I have done something long and complicated that I may wish to modify, in which case I have the odd embedded RAW afphoto file. This way I keep my original RAW files, which are usually around 25MB, can see most changes in a small linked file, with a small number of bigger files (or possibly jpegs) for more complex work.

[sbishop58]

2 hours ago, stuartbarry said:

Since Affinity Photo 2 I only use linked RAW files. If you don't make any changes that require a pixel layer (stick to layer filters and masks) the linked file is usually less than 1MB. There is a small, sidecar XMP file. An equivalent embedded RAW file can be 200MB or more. If I need to make destructive changes I tend to save as jpg, unless I have done something long and complicated that I may wish to modify, in which case I have the odd embedded RAW afphoto file. This way I keep my original RAW files, which are usually around 25MB, can see most changes in a small linked file, with a small number of bigger files (or possibly jpegs) for more complex work.

Yes I see what you mean.  Originally developed Linked RAW files do indeed produce a much smaller file but mine was a .afphoto file about 1 MB in size.  No .xmp in the directory.  Then I went to perform a little touch up using the Inpainting Brush tool.  Affinity Photo needed a pixel layer to perform the operation which the Assistant created and after saving the file size it jumped to 250 MB.  I must agree there is savings using a Linked RAW file but it comes with limitations.  

[walt.farrell]

18 minutes ago, sbishop58 said:

Then I went to perform a little touch up using the Inpainting Brush tool.  Affinity Photo needed a pixel layer to perform the operation

Create a new empty pixel layer above the RAW layer. Set the Inpainting Brush to Current Layer & Below in the Context Toolbar options.

[v_kyr]

4 minutes ago, sbishop58 said:

...Affinity Photo needed a pixel layer to perform the operation which the Assistant created and after saving the file size it jumped to 250 MB...

That's by far much too much, if an initially 1 MB bitmap file (?) gets after a little touch up to 250 MB. - On the other side the APh Inpainting Brush tool is a pretty slow and very CPU intensive performer (...it takes forever to perform even little color changes with that one on small RAM equipped systems) and if all it's processing steps are then also kept as part of the file's modify history, then I'm not surprised that the file result is quite large.

Did you tried some "save as ..." afterwards in order to see if it maybe affects size wise the final written out file here? - And what size had an export as JPG/PNG in contrast to the APh file save?

[walt.farrell]

17 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

hat's by far much too much, if an initially 1 MB bitmap file (?)

If it's truly a RAW file, then it is probably not in a format that requires 32, 64, or, or 128 bits per pixel (RGB/8, RGB/16, RGB/32), but one that requires only between 10 and 13 bits per pixel. Therefore, simply "developing" it to a basic RGB format at least triples the size (RGB/8) or could increase it by a factor of 12 (RGB/32). Then there is the additional data needed in a .afphoto file, which will increase that further. And also the initial Snapshot, which could be 1/2 of the added size and can be deleted to save some space.

[Phatman]

On 2/4/2023 at 6:55 PM, stuartbarry said:

Since Affinity Photo 2 I only use linked RAW files. If you don't make any changes that require a pixel layer (stick to layer filters and masks) the linked file is usually less than 1MB. There is a small, sidecar XMP file. An equivalent embedded RAW file can be 200MB or more. If I need to make destructive changes I tend to save as jpg, unless I have done something long and complicated that I may wish to modify, in which case I have the odd embedded RAW afphoto file. This way I keep my original RAW files, which are usually around 25MB, can see most changes in a small linked file, with a small number of bigger files (or possibly jpegs) for more complex work.

Is this a version 2 feature? It sounds similar to RawTherapee where the settings are saved in a sidecar file.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Phatman said:

Is this a version 2 feature? It sounds similar to RawTherapee where the settings are saved in a sidecar file.

Linked or Embedded RAW files are a V2 feature.

The XMP support is in both V1 and V2, but is used solely for reading/writing metadata, not for development settings. There's a Preferences/Settings option in Photo about whether to use XMP files or not.

[irandar]

Hello, I have also recently experienced a huge abnormal file size from an astro editing with APv1. instead of the usual 20mb it was 5GB. Happened on two separate occasions this week.  Hopefully never again. 

[irandar]

Hello, I have experienced 5.23gb file size after astro stacking a set of 15 FITS files. After editing it was 2.93 GB The resulting jpg 100% file was 124 mb.  Do you think anything is wrong with APv1 or my iMac? Thanks

[walt.farrell]

21 minutes ago, irandar said:

Hello, I have experienced 5.23gb file size after astro stacking a set of 15 FITS files. After editing it was 2.93 GB The resulting jpg 100% file was 124 mb.  Do you think anything is wrong with APv1 or my iMac? Thanks

I would recommend working with Serif in your other topic about your FITS issues, rather than scattering the discussion in multiple places. 

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/189772-v1-crashes-when-stacking-fits/