Is an extremely large Affinity file normal?

[krozwynd]

Hello Affinity Support and Team!

I'm having some trouble diagnosing a couple problems I'm having on the saving and export ends of using Affinity Photo. When I open a high resolution RAW file (.NEF from Nikon) in AP, it opens up the Develop persona, of which I click "Develop" with no edits--and have turned all auto processing from the assistant off so it doesn't affect the image. When I save the file as is with no additional changes, the file size of the Affinity photo file is over ten times the high resolution file size. (See attached screen shots.) Is this normal?

 

I'm also having trouble with the exports (JPEG best) of my photos retaining the same quality as what I see on my screen from AP. For starters, the exports look noisier/grainier than what's in the AP window, and the colors are a little off as well (though the colors aren't as noticeable as the noise). Is this normal as well, or is this a bug I'm experiencing? 

 

I've reviewed your exporting tutorials, and unfortunately they were not able to assist, even in copying the suggested workflows. 

 

Any help will be greatly appreciated in figuring out what's happening and how to best move forward with AP.

 

Thanks!

 

Computer Specs:

iMac 24" (early 2009)

OSX 10.11.6 (can't upgrade to Sierra or later due to hardware incompatibility)

2.66 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo

4 GB DDR3 RAM

 

AP Version: 1.5.2

[krozwynd]

Hello Affinity Support & Forum Members,

I just wanted to follow up on my second inquiry on my previous post. After running a few tests, I believe my issue is similar to a problem another user was having here. While what I was experiencing was the inverse of the other user's issue, I want to confirm with the Affinity Team and/or Users: is the denoise generator in AP dynamic, so unless I'm viewing the image at 100% the visual noise could change depending on my viewing scale, which would thus in turn affect how much noise is removed in the final exports?

 

Furthermore, I'm finding my JPEG exports (with resampler of lanczos 3 non separated) are turning out significantly sharper than what's in AP. In my previous post's added screenshot, where AP is on the left and an export of the image in Preview is on the right, you'll notice the items on and in the bookcase are significantly sharper/clearer/detailed, as well as the metronome and light fixture. Is there a setting I'm missing in AP, or is that just how AP renders JPEG's?

 

Thanks!

[Sean P]

Hello Affinity Support & Forum Members,

I just wanted to follow up on my second inquiry on my previous post. After running a few tests, I believe my issue is similar to a problem another user was having here. While what I was experiencing was the inverse of the other user's issue, I want to confirm with the Affinity Team and/or Users: is the denoise generator in AP dynamic, so unless I'm viewing the image at 100% the visual noise could change depending on my viewing scale, which would thus in turn affect how much noise is removed in the final exports?

 

Furthermore, I'm finding my JPEG exports (with resampler of lanczos 3 non separated) are turning out significantly sharper than what's in AP. In my previous post's added screenshot, where AP is on the left and an export of the image in Preview is on the right, you'll notice the items on and in the bookcase are significantly sharper/clearer/detailed, as well as the metronome and light fixture. Is there a setting I'm missing in AP, or is that just how AP renders JPEG's?

 

Thanks!

 

Hi Krozwynd

 

Welcome to the Affinity Forum and my apologies for the delay in replying.

 

With regards to your question about Noise, you are indeed correct, you need to view it at 100% to get an accurate view of what your export will look like. With the JPG export could you attach your source AFPhoto so I can investigate?

 

Finally the reason for the large file size is that RAW files are generally in RGB 16bit, however when you develop them in Affinity we intentionally set the colour mode to be RGB 32bit which contains a LOT more data than in 16bit. We also automatically take a snapshot after developing as well which also adds to the size. The snapshot can be removed from the Snapshot Panel and the colour mode can be changed to Document > Colour Format. This should help for the filesize.