Why does File->Export mark original image "Modified"?

[walt.farrell]

With AP 1.6.1.93 or Beta 1.6.3.96 on Windows, I've noticed that if I open a file (e.g., a .jpg or .tif), then immediately do a File->Export to save a copy of the file, AP marks my original file as Modified when I click Save on the Export dialog.

Why? I haven't done anything to change the original file at that point.

Then, when I try to close the original, AP asks if I want to save it, which is confusing as I haven't made any apparent changes to the original.

[walt.farrell]

Note that in the prior description, if I Cancel from File->Export rather than Saving, the current document is not marked modified.

But here's an additional scenario:

1. Open a document (jpg, tif for example)
2. File->Export
3. Click More...
4. Click Close. Current document is immediately marked Modified.

In this scenario canceling the File->Export leaves the document marked Modified.

[Alfred]

I'm glad to learn that I'm not the only one to be bothered by Affinity files being marked as modified when they aren't!

 

If you choose the option to save the history with the document, then even if you roll back any changes they are still in the history and the document needs to be resaved in order to preserve them. If you don't have that option set, the document will be in its original state after rolling back any changes but it still ends up being marked as modified.

 

[walt.farrell]

Thanks, Alfred. It does look like the history is the modification being indicated, so that explains it. I probably would never have found that on my own

However, this happens even when I have not selected Save History with Document. And in any case it seems odd because it's the .jpg or .tif document being marked modified. If I do nothing else after the export except try to close the document, AP will ask if I want to save it. If I say yes it will happily save the document, overwriting the original .jpg or .tif (and, not saving the History anyway).

That potentially loses some EXIF information, and I'm concerned that for .jpg the quality may suffer from the unneeded save operation. As I didn't choose to save History this is a totally unneeded operation.

If I had chosen to Save with History then at least when closing I would have had to flatten the document, or Save As a .afphoto file.Save As is the only case where the History becomes relevant.

Of course, I suppose it is probably a rare situation when someone has done nothing to a document except open it, and then export it. So it's probably a very low priority change for the Affinity team.

[IanSG]

7 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

With AP 1.6.1.93 or Beta 1.6.3.96 on Windows, I've noticed that if I open a file (e.g., a .jpg or .tif), then immediately do a File->Export to save a copy of the file, AP marks my original file as Modified when I click Save on the Export dialog.

This irritates me too, but it's not new to v1.6 - so far as I know AP has always done this.

[Alfred]

3 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

As I didn't choose to save History this is a totally unneeded operation.

 

Exactly, Walt! Serif's legacy Windows-only software titles all (with the notable exception of PhotoPlus) stop marking a document as 'dirty' if you roll back all changes made since it was last saved.

[R C-R]

For what little it is worth, this does not happen in the current Mac retail version (1.6.6). I think it was mentioned somewhere that one of the bug fixes/improvements in the update was to eliminate unnecessarily marking a document as modified, but I can't find a link for that at the moment.