vitavalka Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 Hello, I'd like to ask if there's a solution to stop/avoid growing of files that I edit or change. It seems that working on a file simply grows it's size over time and there's no clear solution to keep it small. Originally I thought it's the saving of the full history in the file. But when I open recently edited files in both Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer, it has no prior history stored in it. Anybody has an idea? Thx! Btw. backup solution that I have is to open a new file and paste all content from the old file to the new one. But that's killing export settings and you need to think of setting bleed correctly etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vitavalka Posted January 23, 2017 Author Share Posted January 23, 2017 The issue is on both my Mac version, and my customers' Windows version of Affinity Designer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asser82 Posted January 23, 2017 Share Posted January 23, 2017 Might be related to: https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/33262-afphoto-files-are-getting-bigger-and-bigger/ https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/33969-ap-15145-beta-win-file-size-issue/ It is AF photo there, but I am sure that the same file format is used. For me it looks like a memory leak, where the history items remain in the solution, event if the history panel does not know anything about them. vitavalka 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Ben Posted March 2, 2017 Staff Share Posted March 2, 2017 It is not a memory leak. There are already comments on other threads explaining the reasons for files getting larger: 1) You have "Save History" turned on for you file. This stores all changes you made and can greatly increase file size. 2) The file appends incremental changes until it reaches a threshold when the file is streamlined, removing redundant data. At that point the file is reorganised and the size will drop. This only happens intermittently, not with each Save. 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...
carl123 Posted March 2, 2017 Share Posted March 2, 2017 2) The file appends incremental changes until it reaches a threshold when the file is streamlined, removing redundant data. At that point the file is reorganised and the size will drop. This only happens intermittently, not with each Save. Can you elaborate on that please Is there a set number of saves before the streamlining takes place? Or is there a way to force the streamlining process when you know you have done/doing your final save? 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...
vitavalka Posted March 3, 2017 Author Share Posted March 3, 2017 It is not a memory leak. You have "Save History" turned on for you file. This stores all changes you made and can greatly increase file size. That's what I thought. But whenever I open an existing file, the history list is empty, while the filesize grows. In my case a multi page brochure has some hundreds of MBs so nothing crazy compared to Adobe SW. But still, Affinity aims higher :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Ben Posted March 21, 2017 Staff Share Posted March 21, 2017 Can you elaborate on that please Is there a set number of saves before the streamlining takes place? Or is there a way to force the streamlining process when you know you have done/doing your final save? Streamlining happens when 33% of the file is redundant (replaced or deleted) data. When that happens the file is restructured to remove all the dead bits. Most of the data in a file will likely be raster/pixel data. In order to cause a streamline, you generally have to be overdrawing on existing pixel layers, or deleting pixel layers. Adding new layers will not generate redundant data, so a streamline is less likely. To force a streamline you can do a Save-As to a new file. The new file will always be a streamlined version. carl123, toupee, Alex_M and 2 others 5 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...
Morten_Hjort Posted April 7, 2017 Share Posted April 7, 2017 Streamlining happens when 33% of the file is redundant (replaced or deleted) data. When that happens the file is restructured to remove all the dead bits. Most of the data in a file will likely be raster/pixel data. In order to cause a streamline, you generally have to be overdrawing on existing pixel layers, or deleting pixel layers. Adding new layers will not generate redundant data, so a streamline is less likely. To force a streamline you can do a Save-As to a new file. The new file will always be a streamlined version. Ahh ok and the streamlined data is kept if I want to use the History function? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morten_Hjort Posted April 7, 2017 Share Posted April 7, 2017 Ahh and I can see I haven't seen the replies above. Could this also be the reason for having major performance issues with almost all documents in all sizes on both Mac and PC's? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Ben Posted April 7, 2017 Staff Share Posted April 7, 2017 No - the history feature has nothing to do with streamlining. History is written in full every time we make a save, if you have the option turned on. The history forms part of the central document state. It's the pixel data that we can efficiently save as required. History will contain pixel data references - and we don't need to resave the pixel data every time - just the structural data required for the document. Every time we do a save, we write all the changes to the end of the file. That way we don't have to form a complete new file every time we save. As old data is not removed, we track the amount of obsolete data in the file. Streamlining is a housekeeping process that defragments the file, and is performed after a save - it just removes the obsolete data. You need to be more specific about your performance issues. Generally, any performance issues are not due to saving and loading your document, so we would need to investigate further. Alex_M 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...
gdenby Posted April 7, 2017 Share Posted April 7, 2017 I've just noticed something similar in a file I've been working on the past week or so. As far as I know, I have never saved with history. The file is a grid of jigsaw shapes. I grouped them, and filled the group w. a bitmap. Then ungrouped the shapes, so that I could shift the pieces w. the portions of bit map assigned to them. My supposition is that what happened was that the bitmap was replicated 70 times, which boosted the file size from about 140 K to more than 25 M. I have since deleted all the bit map fills. The shapes are now just strokes, no fill. I have "saved" and "saved as" several times, and the file size has remained over 20 M. I have copied out 10 of the 70 puzzle pieces, and pasted them into a new file, which is just 20 K, as I expected. Any idea why the emptied copies remain so large? Its not a big deal to replicate the file a few pieces at a time, but I'm perplexed at what might have happened. Quote iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb, AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil Huion WH1409 tablet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Ben Posted April 11, 2017 Staff Share Posted April 11, 2017 Do you have Save With History turned on (under the File menu)? 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...
gdenby Posted April 11, 2017 Share Posted April 11, 2017 Do you have Save With History turned on (under the File menu)? No, I've never turned on save history. It has been unchecked whenever I have looked. I made several attempts at creating the jig shapes. Most at one point or another had a bitmap used to fill them. Those that still have the bit map assigned to the pieces are are in the high 20 to low 30 Mb range. Those that I changed to ordinary color fills dropped to just above 20 Mb. Likewise those that I removed all fills, leaving only strokes so I could see the pieces. Some have been saved several times, and the same ones "saved as" w/o any size reduction more than maybe 200 Kb. When I copied the pieces out of the document, and pasted then into a new one, the new file was just over 120 Kb, as I supposed it would be. One of the early sets, now turned to 2 alternating grey color fills export to an .svg 0f just over 20K. Quote iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb, AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil Huion WH1409 tablet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Ben Posted April 12, 2017 Staff Share Posted April 12, 2017 We'd have to see your file in order to know what is going on... 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...
gdenby Posted April 12, 2017 Share Posted April 12, 2017 The smallest example I have, even compressed, exceeds the upload limit here. I have a Google account I've never used, but if I can figure it out, I believe I could e-mail it to folks. I have some business to do just now, but will see what I can manage later in the day. It is an odd set of files. I've tried other files where I have filled several shapes w. 1 bit map, or split a shape into more pieces. Those, after I deleted the fill returned to small size vectors. Quote iMac 27" Retina, c. 2015: OS X 10.11.5: 3.3 GHz I c-5: 32 Gb, AMD Radeon R9 M290 2048 Mb iPad 12.9" Retina, iOS 10, 512 Gb, Apple pencil Huion WH1409 tablet Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Ben Posted April 13, 2017 Staff Share Posted April 13, 2017 Easiest is to use DropBox. 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...
Morten_Hjort Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 I just rasterized a document which kept it filesize at 100mb as it was before with the layers. I then tried to open the doc on my quadcore 2016 tMBP which took 38 seconds. Shouldn't such a simple document with no layers open almost right away? Theres nothing in history so doesnt seem the reason. If I streamline (save as a new file) its 80mb and takes exactly the same time to load. I can share you my full folder of files. I've gotten to a point where I consider abandon AD as I'm having issues with every single file on both Mac and PC. My first few months with AD was perfect but in the recent time I've got performance issues with every single document :( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morten_Hjort Posted April 17, 2017 Share Posted April 17, 2017 We'd have to see your file in order to know what is going on... Can I share my Google Drive folder with you? Then just copy-paste the file to somewhere else Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elsea Posted May 20, 2017 Share Posted May 20, 2017 I noticed recently the huge affinity files. I deleted them, often between 200 and 300 MB. Never saved history. Now I just keep the raw. This is only the case in editing a raw file, so now I devolop raw. Export the first edit as an tiff. Close the raw devolopment without saving and make further edits on the tiff file. I am not experienced and knowingly enough to know wether with this space-saving action, I might loose some information? Anyhow, it seems to go well this way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theDigitalKungFu Posted February 7, 2020 Share Posted February 7, 2020 I was really impressed with Affinity Photo in the first 10 minutes of using it... then I saved and found a 20 megapixel photo with a file size of 120 megabytes. Pretty disappointing, really. The program is really great, with a nice workflow (though I do wish it would save an .xmp file or similar for edits to .cr2 files). If the file size wasn't such an issue, you would have my $40 in two minutes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carl123 Posted February 8, 2020 Share Posted February 8, 2020 Try deleting the snapshot and let us know if that makes a difference in your case https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/86287-huge-file-size/&do=findComment&comment=572357 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...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.