Figmatt Posted December 31, 2016 Share Posted December 31, 2016 I have an simple Affinity Designer document with one image and some line work. when saved without an image it is a 13KB afdesign file when I add a 750KB JPG file to the document, the saved afdesign file size is over 15MB why is this? is there anything I can do to make the afdesign file size more similar to the size of the JPG it contains? ps: I am not saving history with file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oval Posted January 2, 2017 Share Posted January 2, 2017 It already was explained that the file format is optimised for speed rather than size. Figmatt 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted January 2, 2017 Staff Share Posted January 2, 2017 Hi matt, As Oval already pointed out our file format is optimised for speed. Check this thread for more info about this subject. Figmatt 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figmatt Posted January 2, 2017 Author Share Posted January 2, 2017 Thanks both. Is there anything I can do to reduce the filesize? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oval Posted January 2, 2017 Share Posted January 2, 2017 Thanks both. Is there anything I can do to reduce the filesize? We don’t have your file so we cannot tell you specific details. But as MEB already pointed out, check the thread, please. A black Affinity cat has great tips and tricks for you there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figmatt Posted January 2, 2017 Author Share Posted January 2, 2017 I'll try rasterising the image layer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figmatt Posted January 3, 2017 Author Share Posted January 3, 2017 Rasterising the image layer resulted in a file of 17.3MB Which is even larger than before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figmatt Posted January 3, 2017 Author Share Posted January 3, 2017 Some attachments. my afdesign file 1. without image 2. with image 3. with image rasterised 4. the original JPEG If I reduce the DPI of the document to 72dpi, the afdesign file drops to 1.7MB which is acceptable, given the size of the original assets, but in this case the image quality is far too low for my requirements. With regards to the "optimised for speed not size" when saving files to iCloud, or other cloud services like dropbox that I use for my clients, the larger file in fact decreases speed of operation as Affinity Designer halts the user interface with a progress bar as the file is saved. without image.afdesign with image.afdesign with image rasterised.afdesign Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff MEB Posted January 3, 2017 Staff Share Posted January 3, 2017 Hi matt, No, there isn't much you can do to reduce the file size other than disabling Save History with the document which i believe you already did. The Affinity format wasn't conceived for image storage but speed and as such it includes additional data just for this purpose. As Ben pointed out in the thread i linked above there's plans to take a look at our format again for Publisher's release. Linked images will also help to reduce file size but until there there isn't much you can do about it, sorry. Figmatt 1 Quote A Guide to Learning Affinity Software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figmatt Posted January 3, 2017 Author Share Posted January 3, 2017 Thanks MEB. I'll try some more experiments for my specific use case in this instance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fixx Posted January 3, 2017 Share Posted January 3, 2017 Work copies should be saved local. Cloud has its problems plenty.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figmatt Posted January 3, 2017 Author Share Posted January 3, 2017 Work copies should be saved local. Cloud has its problems plenty..With all due respect, saving to the cloud works just fine for me outside of Affinity. Also, not using the cloud doesn't make the issue of huge file sizes go away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mac_heibu Posted January 3, 2017 Share Posted January 3, 2017 Wow, how friendly words! That really invites us for assistance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figmatt Posted January 3, 2017 Author Share Posted January 3, 2017 There was nothing unfriendly in them. I just disagreed with a recommendation that I change the way I work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl123 Posted January 3, 2017 Share Posted January 3, 2017 I think we all need to bear in mind that these forums are international and English may not be the mother tongue of a lot of users. Because of this friendly advice or short comments may be misinterpreted in a way that they were not intended to be. Figmatt 1 Quote To save time I am currently using an automated AI to reply to some posts on this forum. If any of "my" posts are wrong or appear to be total b*ll*cks they are the ones generated by the AI. If correct they were probably mine. I apologise for any mistakes made by my AI - I'm sure it will improve with time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figmatt Posted January 3, 2017 Author Share Posted January 3, 2017 I've edited my earlier reply to be a bit less curt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Ben Posted January 3, 2017 Staff Share Posted January 3, 2017 Hi matt, No, there isn't much you can do to reduce the file size other than disabling Save History with the document which i believe you already did. The Affinity format wasn't conceived for image storage but speed and as such it includes additional data just for this purpose. As Ben pointed out in the thread i linked above there's plans to take a look at our format again for Publisher's release. Linked images will also help to reduce file size but until there there isn't much you can do about it, sorry. The main issue will be that we serialise reordered/fragmented versions of the embedded image file. For files with many embedded images this greatly improves the time taken when opening a document, and the memory overhead when working on it. It does come at a cost of larger files - partly due to the fact that the original JPEG compression will be high but lossy, whereas we have to use lossless forms of compression for our document raster data. This is a balancing act that will depend on the amount of raster or other content. To now, we have opted for performance over space as Designer was initially geared to single page documents, and for design as opposed to layout. This has evolved somewhat over time. As MEB says, we will look into this further as we have to address issues with Publisher, which will be the app intended for layout. Storage space will become an issue. There will be a number of ways in which we might address the balance of speed over storage, but it will all be subject to a lot of tuning. Figmatt 1 Quote SerifLabs team - Affinity Developer Software engineer - Photographer - Guitarist - Philosopher iMac 27" Retina 5K (Late 2015), 4.0GHz i7, AMD Radeon R9 M395 MacBook (Early 2015), 1.3GHz Core M, Intel HD 5300 iPad Pro 10.5", 256GB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Figmatt Posted January 3, 2017 Author Share Posted January 3, 2017 Happy that it's on the radar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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