Camera raw file explodes in size after developed in APho

[Affinity Rat]

My camera raw NEF file is 31mb, but after developing, merely increasing exposure, the afphoto file size size jumps to 220mb, is this expected?

[James Ritson]

Hey @Affinity Rat, yes, it is generally expected: the RAW file will be a greyscale 14-bit bitmap (so only contains one channel), and potentially will also have lossless or lossy compression depending on your camera settings.

Once the RAW data is debayered to a full colour image and mapped to a colour space, the resulting .afphoto file will be (by default) a 16-bit per channel RGBA document, which is where the file size increase comes from. Adding more bitmap layer work will of course increase this.

If file sizes are a concern, you could try using the RAW Layer (Linked) option on the Output dropbox when developing your RAW files. This will reduce the file size significantly (typically under 1MB until you start to add more layer work). Do be aware, however, that every subsequent load of the .afphoto file will then require access to the original RAW file so it can be 're-developed'.

Hope that helps!

[Affinity Rat]

Slightly off topic, but I realized because of Bayer filter interpolation, lower resolutions can actually increase image sharpness, by allowing Bayer filter not to interpolate because at higher rez, more pixels mean no need to interpolate, making for potentially sharper images. Therefore  a 48mp sensor camera shot at 12mp colour image, is much sharper than 12 mp camera image producing a 12mp image, because little or no interpolation necessary.

So now my question would be, for a 24mp camera, what rez would maximize image sharpness minimizing the effects from Bayer interpolation.

I guess this means to maximize sharpness, use a camera to maximize sensor pixels then shoot at lower rez.

[NotMyFault]

2 hours ago, Affinity Rat said:

So now my question would be, for a 24mp camera, what rez would maximize image sharpness minimizing the effects from Bayer interpolation.

This doesn’t make practical sense.

Shooting images with Cameras has multiple sources of blurriness (lens, motion, sensor noise, de-bayer, …). There is no single pixel resolution, and what have you won by minimizing de-Bayer blurriness without tackling other sources?
 

Either use a Sigma Sensor (excellent at low ISO, but falls apart at higher ISO 1600), or a monochrome Camera and use colored filters to manually combine 3 exposures into color image. 
 

Sigma says you roughly get 3x resolution from their sensors (who omit Bayer pattern)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foveon_X3_sensor