Affinity Photo 2.5: Exporting images, image size is being reduced.

[Garrett Cobarr]

I've run into a real problem.

I've been exporting images from a Affinity Photo 2.5 and I have noticed that without making a choice to reduce the size of the image, they are being reduced in size.

The Affinity Photo doc is 43,000 by 5000 pixels but the exported PNG image is 32,767 by 3810, a substantial decrease in size. I have attempted the export on both my Macbook Pro and my rack mount Mac Pro (2019) - both are running Catalina.

The results are the same on both machines, the Macbbok Pro has 16gb of RAM and the Mac Pro has 240gb.

I just started running Affinity Photo 2.5 today and I have never seen this behavior before so I am making a half baked assumption that this may be related.

Thanks

[walt.farrell]

You should find a red gray warning message in the Export dialog that tells you your document exceeds the maximum allowed pixel dimensions for a PNG, and that the export will be reduced in size.

(I haven't tried this yet in 2.5, but your dimensions are definitely too large for Affinity to export as a PNG and that's what would happen in previous releases.)

 

Edited May 25 by walt.farrell
editted to fix color of warning message

[Garrett Cobarr]

Thanks for your reply.

This appears to be a limit, a disappointing limit within Affinity Photo, it does not appear to be a limit of PNG itself.

What's the largest possible PNG? by Evan Hahn.

If you had not mentioned it, I would not have noticed the warning. Nothing in red, just a light grey text.

Sadly this problem seems worse than I originally thought: I attempted to export into JPEG, no warnings but when I opened the JPEG (best quality) - it is the correct size but is nothing but a blue image, image was missing.

Since this is meant for print, I exported to print without issues. This does complicate some screen viewing and other file handling but all can be gotten around.

[walt.farrell]

22 minutes ago, Garrett Cobarr said:

If you had not mentioned it, I would not have noticed the warning. Nothing in red, just a light grey text.

Thanks. I had misremembered it as red.

Others have complained about this Affinity-imposed limit, too.

23 minutes ago, Garrett Cobarr said:

but when I opened the JPEG (best quality) - it is the correct size but is nothing but a blue image, image was missing.

Sorry, I have no ideas about that one. If it's an image you can share publicly (or if you have one you can share publicly that also misbehaves) I'd be happy to look at it.

[Garrett Cobarr]

I was surprised about the limit as I have never encountered an upper memory limit with Affinity Photo.

I was in the beta program and when I was trying it out and excited to leave Photoshop, I had tried opening different size files. One time I had accidentally left about 20 large files selected and double clicked, I was sure it would lock up. It did not.

I could easily go from tab to tab of the large files.

I wonder why they limit the size of PNG handling?

[walt.farrell]

5 hours ago, Garrett Cobarr said:

I wonder why they limit the size of PNG handling?

This was the reason provided by Serif at one time, but I think that rationale may not be (or may no longer be?) correct: 

 

[Dan C]

Thanks for raising this @Garrett Cobarr!

As the comment above was initially regarding V1 and our system requirements have since changed for V2, it may be that we're able to increase the maximum PNG export size - though I'm not 100% certain if the Windows GUI limit will still apply here.

Therefore I have asked this question to our development team internally and I will be sure to respond here ASAP with any information I'm provided.

I hope this helps

[Dan C]

Thanks for your patience here - our team have confirmed that this limit could be removed for Affinity V2 due to the above changes, but as of yet we have not implemented this change as many apps will struggle to 'view' or edit a PNG file larger than this limit.

Therefore our team believed that leaving this limit would reduce the number of users creating a PNG larger than can be displayed outside of Affinity, who would then contact our support claiming the exported PNG file is corrupted etc due to the inability to view the file.

I have spoken with our team, referencing this thread and we are now considering adding an option when exporting to PNG, with sizes that exceed the current maximum pixel limit, to offer an override checkbox to the user, to exceed the pixel limit and export the file at actual size.
This would mean that users can choose to limit their PNG export to the universal expected size limit, or ignore this pixel limit and export at full resolution, with the understanding that not all apps may be able to use/view said file.

I'll be sure to add your 'vote' to this internal feature request now, to be considered for a future update.

I hope this clears things up

[rozerbud]

Would this issue be why I somehow cannot export to PNG? I have scaled up an image to life size (66" height), for scaling/measuring purposes, and cannot export it to the file type PNG anymore. Or JPEG for that matter. The file type says "AFPHOTO File (.afphoto)" after exporting, although I am using the export option under "File". I have done this once already successfully but cannot figure out why the second time is different. I am new to the software, and this is one reason I purchased it. I am using Microsoft Paint to print the file as a multi-page poster and it cannot read .afphoto files. 

[Dan C]

Welcome to the Affinity Forums @rozerbud!

13 hours ago, rozerbud said:

Would this issue be why I somehow cannot export to PNG? I have scaled up an image to life size (66" height), for scaling/measuring purposes, and cannot export it to the file type PNG anymore. Or JPEG for that matter.

Assuming your document is 300DPI, even at full 66" size the files pixel measurements would be max 19800px² - which is well below the PNG size limit and therefore I don't believe any of the above discussions in this thread apply to your issue.

13 hours ago, rozerbud said:

The file type says "AFPHOTO File (.afphoto)" after exporting, although I am using the export option under "File".

You are only able to create '.afphoto' files in Affinity Photo when using File > Save (or File > Save As) and it's not possible to create this file type using File > Export.

After navigating to File > Export, you will be shown the Export Dialog, with a preview of your exported file and a dropdown menu of the supported export formats.

Select your format from the list and then adjust your format specific settings on the right hand side of the preview.

Once happy with these settings, select the Export option and you should see a Windows Explorer dialog open, allowing you to select where the exported files should be saved - you can find out more about exporting from AP here:

However, it's very possible that you are already following these steps correctly and exporting to PNG/JPG - though you might see these categorised as 'Affinity Photo files' in Windows Explorer, based on your default application set to open these file types.

If you open an Explorer window and navigate to a file that you know is a .PNG or .JPG file, then right-click this and select Open With > Choose Another App, in the dialog that opens scroll through the list of apps and select "Photos" (the Windows Photo viewer app), then enable the checkbox "Always use this app to open .PNG files" before selecting OK.

You should find that your PNG/JPG image is then opened in Windows Photos, and displays as an image file in Explorer, rather than an Affinity file type.

I hope this helps

[Garrett Cobarr]

On 5/29/2024 at 8:40 AM, Dan C said:

Thanks for your patience here - our team have confirmed that this limit could be removed for Affinity V2 due to the above changes, but as of yet we have not implemented this change as many apps will struggle to 'view' or edit a PNG file larger than this limit.

Therefore our team believed that leaving this limit would reduce the number of users creating a PNG larger than can be displayed outside of Affinity, who would then contact our support claiming the exported PNG file is corrupted etc due to the inability to view the file.

I have spoken with our team, referencing this thread and we are now considering adding an option when exporting to PNG, with sizes that exceed the current maximum pixel limit, to offer an override checkbox to the user, to exceed the pixel limit and export the file at actual size.
This would mean that users can choose to limit their PNG export to the universal expected size limit, or ignore this pixel limit and export at full resolution, with the understanding that not all apps may be able to use/view said file.

I'll be sure to add your 'vote' to this internal feature request now, to be considered for a future update.

I hope this clears things up

Apologies for the late response.

Thank you for your help, much appreciated.

This would be a completely acceptable option, anything that would the export of a larger PNG.

I have to say that I've led a charmed life, I've never run into a problem with opening a PNG large or small. I am exclusively on the Mac and run a tight circle of software for image work, especially digital photography. Affinity is the emperor of that circle. I use Apple's Quick Viewer / Preview for easy access and Fast Raw Viewer to review and cull, mainly RAW files.

I do some of this work on my Macbook Pro but the heavy lifting is on my Mac Pro Rack Mount with plenty of RAM. Big files of any kind pose memory management issues so you have to be careful and know your device / software limits. But I've not encountered an artificial limit before, in place, to the limit the problems of some users software, those are legit concerns, providing a warning and an option to run wild makes sense to me.

Working with large image files is not new to me but my recent projects have put me into undiscovered territory.

I've been developing a technique combining AEB ( Automatic Exposure Bracketing ) and panoramic stitching, other than heading out to wild country to capture the photographic data, the most important part of this process is Affinity Photo. Typically, I use 7 bracketed exposures ( all are RAW files ). Each set of exposures is run through Photo's Stack system to create a tonal merge, this is after any processing needed at the RAW import / development stage.

That is accomplished by selecting several different shots, usually in the center of the exposures, finding a RAW processing need, making that into a macro and to maintain constancy run a batch on all the RAW files in a panoramic set.

I refer to each stack as frame once the images are collapsed into a single image. Those frames are then run through Photo's Panoramic processing to create the final landscape image. All through the stages I am exporting PNGs for review outside of Affinity Photo.

In most cases there is no issue but when I am exporting preview PNGs for the full landscape I run into the size limit. The panoramas, depending on the visual arc captured, are often between 42,000 and 55,000 pixels wide. so they get clipped, an undesirable outcome. As the aspect ratio is between 8.1 / 1 to 10 / 1, the vertical pixel measure has never been an issue.

This has been a bit of a learning experience with some surprises, considering the issues that could choke software, the pixel count is not something I've had to consider prior to this. Thanks to Photo's ability to process 14 bit depth images and the room to work in 32 bit, I can handle the dynamic range and file size of each stack which are averaging 220 t0 250 megabytes. When the panoramic process is completed, each image is running a size of between 1.5 and 2.5 gigabytes. On my machine, Affinity Photo handles these files like a champ.

This is why this PNG pixel limit came as such a surprise, one would think bit depth and/or file size would be the challenges, not pixel count. This shows that I have a more limited understanding of the PNG file format than I've previously considered.

I'd be thrilled to see your aforementioned PNG feature option in a future upgrade, hopefully sooner than later. 🙂

 

 

 

[nickbatz]

That aside, is there a reason to export PNG files rather than JPEG or (for printing) TIFF?

 

 

[Garrett Cobarr]

17 hours ago, nickbatz said:

That aside, is there a reason to export PNG files rather than JPEG or (for printing) TIFF?

The short answer, mobility. The slightly longer answer, mobility through my production flow.

The long answer:

TIFF is an old format but for many years it was the only way to work with high resolution, large image files but it is slow. In my system it is ungainly and prone to problems as I pass it from software to software. I feel a personal connection to it in that I was part of its early development. In 1985 - 1986 I worked for a company called Seattle Image Setting running RIP machines ( Raster Interpreters ). In the way back you had to take your digital files to a joint like the company I worked for to have it turned into piece of film that could be sent to a printer.

The company was in the same building as Aldus Corporation who created Pagemaker, the original publishing layout software. My company had a relationship with Aldus, in that we tested and made recommendations for their technologies. At the time, TIFF was developed for a specific purpose, unifying various image scanners under one format. Over the years it had many improvements but size portability always plagued it.

JPEG came about in reaction to the Internet, as did GIF. For a long time JPEG was a lossy format, I did not need to lower quality in the interest of file size,  plus it was in the middle of a protracted patent battle that my clients wanted to steer clear of. So I got in the habit of avoiding it. But I did embrace JPEG 2000 which had none of the legal issues and utilized wavelet technology, a lossless compression that preserved high image quality.

PNG was introduced in the mid 90's but has progressed rapidly, it is a lossless format and does a very good job of retaining image quality.

I've done testing in my system of all these formats, some detail explanation above on that production flow. PNG moves the easiest, without dysfunction, opens quickly without any image quality reduction.

Your production flow is determined by your desired outcomes, I no longer have any interest in online work so that challenge is eliminated for me. Internally I use PNG but when I send content to printers I use PDF. PDF is great for all kinds of portability needs but once you've saved to it it is not that great for internal work flow, in that way it is much like a final print – good for delivery to an external target but not so good for internal work flow.

Wikipedia has some excellent articles on these files formats, if interested:

TIFF

JPEG

JPEG 2000

PNG

 

[nickbatz]

6 hours ago, Garrett Cobarr said:

 

The long answer:

 

 

Very interesting. Thanks.

I wonder whether my printers (Canon Pro-1000 and Pro-4100) are as happy with PNG, because as you say, the files are certainly a lot smaller.

My workflow is simpler than yours: exporting finished pictures from Affinity Photo - without ICC profiles - and then opening them in Canon Pro Print & Layout to print. i do post them online, but I've been using compressed JPEGs for that (because I want them to be lower-res as a poor man's security system).

That's a good question to pose on the DP Review printing forum.

[Old Bruce]

Good bit of history there @Garrett Cobarr.

About the only reason I have for recommending TIFF over PNG is the ability of it to be in CMYK. Oh, one other reason is inertia, used to be the print shops I used insisted on it.

Oh, and for what it is worth I am at the north end of the Salish Sea.

[Garrett Cobarr]

18 hours ago, nickbatz said:

Very interesting. Thanks.

I wonder whether my printers (Canon Pro-1000 and Pro-4100) are as happy with PNG, because as you say, the files are certainly a lot smaller.

My workflow is simpler than yours: exporting finished pictures from Affinity Photo - without ICC profiles - and then opening them in Canon Pro Print & Layout to print. i do post them online, but I've been using compressed JPEGs for that (because I want them to be lower-res as a poor man's security system).

That's a good question to pose on the DP Review printing forum.

How do you like your printers? "...without ICC profiles - and then opening them in Canon Pro Print & Layout to print.," is that an alternative to ICC profiles?

"i do post them online, but I've been using compressed JPEGs for that (because I want them to be lower-res as a poor man's security system)." Smart and sober play,  I'm taking my time for the online portion of this new work. The concern used to be copy & paste theft, now it's AI.

"That's a good question to pose on the DP Review printing forum." I haunt that forum as well. 🙂

For the work I am doing, I use three forums: here is for all things Affinity, mostly Photo. As I shoot with a Canon EOS R5 I make heavy use of the official and unofficial Canon forums. But the DP Review is a stalwart for all things digital camera. Canon has dropped internal GPS on a number of their cameras, including the R5 so I had to buy a geotagger that fits into the camera's flash hot shoe.

The manufacturer is based in China, the Solmeta device is great but the company, not so much. I would have been seriously stuck without help from folk on the DP Review forums.

 

[Garrett Cobarr]

3 hours ago, Old Bruce said:

About the only reason I have for recommending TIFF over PNG is the ability of it to be in CMYK. Oh, one other reason is inertia, used to be the print shops I used insisted on it.

As I said, each format has its own, special purposes, depending on your outcomes. I'd forgotten about the CMYK part of TIFF, when the format first started out, it was just grayscale. Thank god we have the PDF/X-1A format now.

For me and the work I am doing now, it's the PDF/X-4 format

My technical graphics training included graphics, camera room operation and offset presses, through the course of my work career, I've done all three. One of the best educations for doing graphics for print is running an offset press, you know exactly what the technology can and cannot do successfully.

"Oh, and for what it is worth I am at the north end of the Salish Sea." – Not far away, I'm in northeast Seattle. 🙂

[nickbatz]

2 hours ago, Garrett Cobarr said:

How do you like your printers? "...without ICC profiles - and then opening them in Canon Pro Print & Layout to print.," is that an alternative to ICC profiles?

No no, I assign the profile inside PP&L rather than embedding it in the file. The only reason is that if I don't use my regular paper (Canson Arches 88) - for example to print flyers - then I can switch profiles.

2 hours ago, Garrett Cobarr said:

"i do post them online, but I've been using compressed JPEGs for that (because I want them to be lower-res as a poor man's security system)." Smart and sober play,  I'm taking my time for the online portion of this new work. The concern used to be copy & paste theft, now it's AI.

I rant uncontrollably about AI (how much I hate the entire concept, at least as applied to art), but there's just no way an LLM could understand what I do (I'm an artist rather than a photographer).

Hopefully that'll be the silver lining - people will be pushed to do things that AI couldn't.

2 hours ago, Garrett Cobarr said:

"That's a good question to pose on the DP Review printing forum." I haunt that forum as well. 🙂

For the work I am doing, I use three forums: here is for all things Affinity, mostly Photo. As I shoot with a Canon EOS R5 I make heavy use of the official and unofficial Canon forums. But the DP Review is a stalwart for all things digital camera. Canon has dropped internal GPS on a number of their cameras, including the R5 so I had to buy a geotagger that fits into the camera's flash hot shoe.

The manufacturer is based in China, the Solmeta device is great but the company, not so much. I would have been seriously stuck without help from folk on the DP Review forums.

 

DP Review is the printing forum I was talking about. I'm glad it didn't shut down a few months ago!

[Garrett Cobarr]

On 6/6/2024 at 5:00 PM, nickbatz said:

I rant uncontrollably about AI (how much I hate the entire concept, at least as applied to art), but there's just no way an LLM could understand what I do (I'm an artist rather than a photographer).

I suffer from the same condition or feature, depending on where you stand.

Theft is theft, theft of someone's creativity is the worst.

There used to be the joke that taking someone's photograph, stole their soul. AI takes the soul and and any future attached to it.

[nickbatz]

1 hour ago, Garrett Cobarr said:

Theft is theft, theft of someone's creativity is the worst.

There used to be the joke that taking someone's photograph, stole their soul. AI takes the soul and and any future attached to it.

That's certainly one part of it - large language models are theft of sorts.

The part that bothers me even more is the whole concept of machines producing something execrable that takes the place of art - human expression. I've ranted about this too many times already here, but this is tens if not hundreds of thousands of years of human culture being replaced with some meaningless techbro garbage.