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I am new to editing software so I hope someone can help me. I am generating enormous files as I try to edit my work  in Affinity Photo. Some files are hundreds of megabytes and one file has reached 2.3 gigabytes in size.  I have  been creating layers, adjustment layers and generally experimenting some of the time. But I have also been deleting layers and cleaning up as I went. I thought this would help to contain the file sizes. I read online somewhere that the history channel can contribute to this? Can I turn this off permanently? My question is 1. Why am I generating such huge files and how can I avoid this? 2. How can I reduce the file sizes to manageable proportions- bearing in mind that I have spent a lot of work on some of them and I don't want to do this all over again.I intend printing these files via an online printing firm.  3. Why is there no comprehensive book in English when there seems to be a German equivalent? If there is anyone who can point me in the right direction I would be very grateful. I've tried to upload some photos for members to view but both uploads have failed -probably due to the huge file size!

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Blimey, 2.3 GB is one BIG file !!!

 

In the File menu, if Save History With Document is ticked that will save every single step you ever made.

 

Normally, undo history is lost when you close the document. Check Save History with Document first, if ticked, untick it and close the document to see what happens.

 

Generally speaking, when you save the file for printing, it will be a JPEG or PDF. That should reduce the file size considerably, especially JPEG. It wont save all the layers and masked files.

 

Out of curiosity, what are the physical dimensions of the document?

 

and are you Mac or PC?

 

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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Thanks for your help.I am using a mac. I recently opened a new Raw file and did no editing at all. When I saved it and closed Affinity, I checked the size using "get info"  it had increased to 381MB.  There must be something fundamentally wrong here. I'm trying to upload this photo for you to have a look at but it just takes too long to load and I've stopped it. I think a 'size' setting of some sort most be wrong but there is no book to consult and this is a serious omission by Serif. It may be OK for experienced Photoshop users but beginners like me can easily get lost.

How do I set the dimensions of the file before working on it?  I need to set smaller dimensions .Thanks for your help

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1 hour ago, John Francis said:

It may be OK for experienced Photoshop users but beginners like me can easily get lost.

 

It baffles me too sometimes. Different terminology :(

 

How big was the original RAW file ?

Windows PCs. Photo and Designer, latest non-beta versions.

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3 hours ago, John Francis said:

When I saved it and closed Affinity, I checked the size using "get info"  it had increased to 381MB.  There must be something fundamentally wrong here.

Not necessarily. RAW files do not contain full sized images as such. Instead they include data from the (usually camera) sensor that needs to be processed into a usable image. Because, as you may have noticed, this processing can take considerable time even if you do not do any editing in the Develop Persona, Affinity Photo saves the developed file in its native .afphoto format, which is optimized for performance rather than file size. The details are considered proprietary trade secrets, so we don't know much about them, but the developers have said they use mipmaps to improve rendering, panning, zooming, & possibly other processes.

 

Unfortunately, this can increase file size considerably, as can storing various kinds of metadata in the file necessary to support various features of the app.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Thanks for your help.I am using a mac. I recently opened a new Raw file and did no editing at all. When I saved it and closed Affinity, I checked the size using "get info"  it had increased to 381MB.  There must be something fundamentally wrong here. I'm trying to upload this photo for you to have a look at but it just takes too long to load and I've stopped it. I think a 'size' setting of some sort most be wrong but there is no book to consult and this is a serious omission by Serif. It may be OK for experienced Photoshop users but beginners like me can easily get lost.

How do I set the dimensions of the file before working on it?  I need to set smaller dimensions .Thanks for your help

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Hi everyone. My main concern is that these huge file sizes will soon fill up my hard drive.  These file sizes seem absurdly huge. The 2 gigabyte file still needs to be sharpened with a high pass filter before going to an online print lab so this will bloat the file even more. Is this normal? I am starting with a raw file of about 25MB and this quickly turns into 381MG after conversion to an afphoto file or even 2GB when some adjustment layers are added. Is this normal? Thanks.

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If you can, posting a RAW file from you camera to this topic may help us see if we get similar results. Note that there are dozens if not hundreds of different RAW file formats, so even if you don't have any photos from your camera you want to post to a public forum, it would help to know the brand & model (both are needed) of your camera.

 

Also note that print labs are unlikely to accept native Affinity file format files for printing, so as @toltec mentioned, exporting to a format they accept will result in a much smaller file.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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Hello RCR, I'm using a Canon 6D set to RAW+jpeg. The file is CR. I've spent a lot of effort putting a double border on a photo. Now it needs to be sharpened using a high pass filter  - which of course will make the file even larger before going to an online printing Lab. How can I avoid generating such high file sizes? I know that I have to convert this to jpeg for online printing, but won't the file size still be pretty huge? I've tried uploading a 164.8 MB file for you to have a look at but the upload failed. Is it normal to generate such huge files when working in Affinity? Can I limit this size by working in a different Affinity setting? Or should I re-size it while I'm still working on it?

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To be clear, I was suggesting that you attach a sample RAW file from your camera to your post, not a developed Affinity one. That way, others can see if developing it in Affinity on their systems results in the same massive increase in file size that you get on yours. Also, is your 6D a MKII or some other model different from the original one? I don't know if that would make any difference but not having a camera that shoots RAW, all I can do is download sample RAW files from the web & see what file sizes Affinity Photo generates with them. So far, I have not seen anything as extreme as you are reporting, but I have only tested with a few cr2 files from a few other Canon cameras.

 

JPEG files can be much, much smaller than other file formats, depending on the 'quality' setting, which determines the amount of lossy compression used to reduce file size. That probably isn't the best format for printing, but other formats that are will also be significantly smaller because they do not need all the stuff Affinity files include to support non-destructive editing, live filters, & so on.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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An example: I opened a Canon 5D IV raw file into AP (v 1.5.2) Develop persona, hit the "Develop" button and then did a Save As... to a ".afphoto" file.  The raw file was converted to a 16bit file in the Develop stage.  The resulting file size for the afphoto file was ~250MB for a 6744x4502 pixel RGB image.

 

If you then export the image as a JPEG, full res, 80% quality, the resulting file is 2.4MB.  This is what you should be sending to the lab for printing, unless they tell you otherwise.  JPEG is an 8bit, flattened file, so you would likely save the afphoto file with all of your layers as the "master" file that you can go back to and edit, re-render to different output sizes and formats, etc. whereas the JPEG is your deliverable format.

 

For comparison, Photoshop opens the raw image and doing a Save As... as a .psd file yields a 180MB file that is 6720 x 4480 pixels.  Saving to a JPEG with level 9 out of 12 quality (about 80% of 12) yields a file that is 4.7MB.  Each application is doing whatever it does, and specifying a specific compression quality in their specific JPEG engine seems to yield different results.

 

What is sort of fascinating, and maybe someone else can try this to verify that it is not some fluke, is what happens when you start to add layers to the file.

 

Here is the test sequence I followed.  Consider opening the raw file to the background layer as "State A."  Also, your file sizes may varying depending upon the pixel dimensions and the nature of the image itself, in terms of compression efficiency.

 

State B: add a Curves adjustment layer to A, without applying any data to the inherent mask and without adjusting the curve (leave it as a straight 45 degree line).  Save As...

State C: stamp the layer stack (CMD+OPT+SHIFT+E or, what AP calls "Merge Visible") in B.  Save As...

State D: Create 3 more curves adjustment layers on top of the previous stack in C.  The Curves have no mask and no adjustments made to the curve.  Save As...

State E: Stamp the layer stack in D.  Save As...

 

None of the curves in the above exercise actually had adjustments made to them, so the stamped pixel layers are identical to the background - more on this below.  For each state, I closed the previous file, reopened StateA.afphoto, and redid all of the steps, so that the history would not accumulate, etc.

 

Here are the resulting file sizes for each state:

 

State   File Size (MB)

A          249.9

B          249.9

C          393*

D          287.7

E          487

 

* - I redid this operation a second time and got a file size of 287.6 MB - this is what it probably should be.  I redid it a third time and got 449MB.  WTF?

 

Obviously adjustment layers cost nothing in terms of file size if there is no bitmap mask associated with that layer.  Add a mask and the file size increases accordingly with the number of masked layers.  What is strange is the behavior of the stack and the Save As... file size when going from State B to State C to State D.  Adding three curves layers onto State C (State D) dramatically decreased file size compared to C - *perhaps*.  I do not get it.  The fact that replicating State C three different times, all from scratch starting with a freshly opened copy of State A, produced three different results is strange. See note below. It would appear that AP is trying to optimize file size by looking at the stack and differences between various layers (pixel layers) and trying to see if they can highly compress a pixel layer that is a duplicate of another one, or something along those lines.  However, it seems like whatever algorithm is being used is not very consistent in its application.  It seems like adding the curves layers (State D) forced the algorithm to compress the stack properly, to get a 287MB file size.

 

What is also interesting is the varying behaviors in States B through D if you make changes between the intervening states.  If you make the Curves adjustment layers so that they stay at their default straight line (no adjustment) and stamp the stack at the previously described locations, etc., you will have a layer stack that is comprised of curves with no adjustments and stamped pixel layers that are identical to the background because the curves do nothing to alter them.  If, however, you make adjustments to the curves, and the stamped pixel layers are different than the background, then the file size changes dramatically.

 

For example, retrace the process above, but apply some arbitrary shape (an "S" curve for example) to each curves adjustment layer - call this branch of our experiment the "+" branch.  Then:

 

State   File Size (MB)

A          249.9

B          249.9

B+        249.9

C          393*

C+        447.5

D          287.7

D+       447.6

E          487.2

E+        656

 

So, AP is looking at the difference in the state of the layer stack and compressing the stack dynamically based on how different pixel layers are.  So, there are all probably all sorts of things going on dynamically to compress the file and save space where the operation can get away with it.  However, the fact that State C above differs over three identical attempts to replicate the state is bizarre and may ultimately uncover some function of the saving algorithm that leads to bloated file sizes, perhaps unnecessarily.

 

RAM and hard drive space is cheap, but a predictable and repeatable save algorithm is important too.

 

kirk

 

NOTE - It seems like some of the files that were the multiple attempts to replicate State C, versus State D, produced different stamped pixel layers (compared to the background layer), even with a curve that should have done nothing to the image.  If I put the stamped pixel layer in "Difference" blend mode (comparing it to the background), there is a noticeable difference between what should be identical pixel layers.  This is likely the problem with my experiment, not the save algorithm.

 

This is still an incredibly bad problem, because it makes the file size skyrocket when the layers are even slightly (inadvertently, erroneously) different.  So, an error in the stack rendering process causes large file sizes because the save algorithm sees the stamped layer as different from the background layer, even though they should be identical.  Tsk tsk.  Worse, it is unpredictable and not repeatable.

 

Maybe the OP should add a blank Curves adjustment layer (or a few) to the top of his layer stack and see if it decreases his file size. Ha!

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Because the details of how the Affinity apps store data in the native file format are considered proprietary trade secrets, the developers have only given us a few clues about how it works. One of them is that images are not saved conventionally as is typical of other apps but instead in part dynamically as serialized data, & that when certain unspecified conditions obtain, some (or all of?) the serialized data is moved into the unserialized part of the file & the cycle begins again. (This is my interpretation of what they have said, pieced together from different posts, so it may be inaccurate or too simplistic in some respects.)

 

What exactly this means has never been made clear but empirically it seems to mean that trying to relate file size to the number of layers, adjustments, or other changing states of the file usually won't make much sense -- the size will grow or shrink depending on how much data is serialized at any given time & how much of it is redundant.

 

They have also hinted at why it is done this way, mentioning (again without disclosing any details they consider to be proprietary) that this facilitates quick saves & loads, improves memory (RAM) efficiency, & reduces the amount of code that needs to be rewritten when features are added or improved that require changes to the the native format.

 

All that said, it still seems apparent that something must be wrong somewhere if a RAW file developed in Affinity Photo results in a file many hundreds of times larger than the RAW original, but I have no idea what that might be.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
Affinity Photo 
1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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