Asset Guide Lines

[Affinity Rat]

Are there any guide lines with respect to asset size or category or sub category sizes to help minimize asset corruption issues.

Obviously, exporting is an apparent necessity.

[walt.farrell]

The underlying issue, I think, is that all Assets are stored in a single file when installed: assets.propcol

As that file grows, and may reach sizes of several GB, operations get slower, and the likelihood of problems occurring during updates grows. I think they may all be loaded into memory whenever the application is running, which may make general operations slower when using the application, not just operations involving updating the assets.

[DM1]

11 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

I think, is that all Assets are stored in a single file when installed: assets.propcol

As that file grows, and may reach sizes of several GB, operations get slower, and

There have been a lot of asset losses with V2 suggesting an underlying issue with asset management that has yet to be resolved. If that is the case it would seem safer for now, to create /save project based assets. Only load what you need for each individual project? 

[walt.farrell]

20 minutes ago, DM1 said:

If that is the case it would seem safer for now, to create /save project based assets. Only load what you need for each individual project? 

Or, simply keep them organized in the file system, and bring them in using Place, or by dragging/dropping from a Finder or File Explorer window.

Edit: Or, use Assets, but keep a good backup of your .protocol find so you can restore it. And good .afassets backups in case that approach fails.

[25a]

Hello Walter,
How do you keep them organized seperately? Is that a wish ore is there a way to do it like that?

I´m a lighting designer and for each Projekt we do a Catalog with different Luminaires.

And I offten use the same Pages in different orders.

So I have 300-500 different Pages where I use for each projekt 5-30 Pages of them.

In Indesign I drag/dropt them as snippets.

Its nearly working with the assets, but Im still searching for a working system ( where I also can use Master Pages)

 

So, .. When the drag/drop with the Explorer ist working, .. cool

[PaulEC]

I use the Assets panel for items supplied as Assets by third parties, which I backup and could reinstall if necessary, and also for items which I need to reuse several times in a particular project. For the majority of "assets" that I have to insert in projects, I do as Walt suggested: "keep them organized in the file system, and bring them in using Place, or by dragging/dropping from a Finder or File Explorer window". There are two reasons why I don't use the Assets Panel more widely, firstly, having lost assets when there was a crash, I don't want to rely on it to keep content safely, secondly, I don't want one huge file, with everything in it, that tends to slow things down. Basically, I think the Assets Panel is useful for "temporary" storage, but I wouldn't use it as the only location for long term storage of content generally.

[25a]

Hey Paul,

but how do you store the Assets in the explorer?

is there a better way then export all assets in the assets Panel?

 

[PaulEC]

19 minutes ago, 25a said:

how do you store the Assets in the explorer?

I have a folder called "Graphics Resources" with subfolders with various different types of content. It can make finding exactly what I want a bit laborious, but it's no more difficult than if I had hundreds of items in dozens of categories in the Assets Panel itself! I use Irfanview to search through them, if I can't remember where stuff is! (N.B. these are not Assets, as contained in the Assets panel, just the various content - of various file types - that I keep filed for when I need them.)

As I said, if something is supplied as an actual Asset file, I add that to the Assets Panel (as there are no individual files) but I always keep a copy that I can reinstall if I need to.

[25a]

ok, so when I correctly understand .. you don´t store the assets in your Explorer, you store the content.

I need to store a hole Page ( eg. 2 Pictures and 3 Textframes set in the right way)

And I need to store 500 of this pages.

At the moment I always take the Content out of xnview ( similar to irvan) but its too much work always enter the hole text, ..

[PaulEC]

6 minutes ago, 25a said:

you don´t store the assets in your Explorer, you store the content.

Well, basically, all Windows (File) Explorer is, is a way of looking at and finding your files. Like I said, these are not actual "Asset" files, just the content (that could have been added to the Assets Panel in the app. if I'd wanted to store it that way.) - I just prefer to keep the original files in folders.

If you need to store complete pages that is obviously different to individual items. If it was for a few pages that I wanted to reuse often, I probably would use the Assets panel, but keep a backup of them! For a large number of pages I would probably save them as Affinity or PDF files in a folder and add them as needed. 

At the end of the day everyone has their own way of working, I'm just saying what works for me. I prefer not trusting everything to the Assets Panel, but I'm sure many other people do just add all their content to it. If that suits your way of working, there's nothing wrong with it, but (as Walt also said) "keep a good backup of your .protocol file so you can restore it. And good .afassets backups in case that approach fails."

[25a]

thx for your Input, I´m actually also a fan of having a good Backup and do not really like the asset organisation. But I need the to have all the pictures linked, not embedded and so I can not really work with pdf. I´ss try the way with aff files but I guess its not really handy, .. so I propably have to deal with the asset manager, ..

 

[walt.farrell]

3 hours ago, 25a said:

How do you keep them organized seperately?

A directory for Assets. Sub-directories for Asset categories. Sub-sub-directories for Asset sub-categories. Etc.

And you can add directories as favorites so they'll show up in the navigation bar of File Explorer or Finder to make them easy to get to.

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, 25a said:

I need to store a hole Page ( eg. 2 Pictures and 3 Textframes set in the right way)

Sounds like you need to save a .afdesign or .afpub document, and Place that document into your new document. But more details would be needed to see if that's going to work.

[25a]

So, thats the way one Page looks like.

I organize it with Master Pages

On each Page the Text and the extern Pictures are different and I´d like to save the hole Page as asset (on the Computer not in the asset Manager)

Each Catalog has similar Pages And I choose the different types of lighting paste them in the Catalog and thats it!

The Assets work well, but only in the Assets Manager not external

[25a]

sorry for this damn looking post, ..

[StuartRc]

Hi

Interesting. Is the page data Driver?
I can see why you would like this as an asset collection. But it loos to me as this type of arrangement would be better suited to template layouts placed pages and data management.
personally I would not recommend adding a huge collection of assets but go down the template and embed | import route. You can easily create a sequence of pages based on templates and use a collection approach using the option of adding specific pages to a document. Both Indesign and Affinity Publisher are capable of this type page structural arrangement. If the pages and content are similar Templating is a much better route

[25a]

Sounds Interesting, do you know a good tutorial that shows the way its working?

At the moment there is no Intelligenz behind this. Its just any Text and some linked Pictures. And I guess it could be Complicated to get it in a database organized. But.. Maybe, ..

[StuartRc]

Data

Not really the Data Merge is quite basic
There is an introductory tutorial on Affinity Spotlight that you can read here

Templates
You can make a template out of any page layout including ones created in Designer and imported | Placed in Publisher. You can also have multiple pages in a single Publisher | Designer File and import the ones you require.
Add Colour Palette with Global Colours to template so you can easily change the colours
Add Style Sheet for you fonts
Add Different layouts to the template or series of templates
 

Just export your final layout as template + Easy to edit

Assets
Limit your assets to features or alternative layouts or groups or text structures



 

[25a]

The Data part ist not really handy, because I need to make this Database.

Maybe later. We´ll see.

Is there a way to export only one Page as temeplate?

The Asset contains 2 Pictures and one textframe.
I guess by now I have to deal with the assets, ..

thx for your Help!!

[StuartRc]

On 2/8/2023 at 9:43 AM, 25a said:

The Data part ist not really handy, because I need to make this Database.

Maybe later. We´ll see.

Is there a way to export only one Page as temeplate?

The Asset contains 2 Pictures and one textframe.
I guess by now I have to deal with the assets, ..

thx for your Help!!

Yep!
Just create you layout; add your template content; Import | set up colours | add Styles etc | margins | sizes
Export as a template (File > Export as Template)...Applies to whole Suite but obviously options settings and tools will vary accordingly
You can mix and match
Easily over-write an existing template (open and edit)
Add multiple pages to template and be selective when say added back to Publisher
Crate modular documents with different template layouts or combine templates with assets to create a flexible system 

In the layout described:
Remember to set the image placement options onto the picture frame first
Apply text styles to your text frame
Define any colours (global useful here as you can sort of remotely adjust them!)