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Where are the files located?


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This is a two-fold question.  First, where do Designer and Photo hide your files like your styles, brushes, color palettes, Assets on a PC?  I've looked in Program Files, Program Files (86) and in the apps areas, Local, Roaming, etc. and I can't find them anywhere.

And secondly, if you have a gazillion styles or brushes, etc, installed, does that slow the program down?

Thank you in advance.

 

Windows 10 Home
Affinity Designer 1.6.4.104
Affinity Photo 1.6.4.104

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%AppData%\Affinity\Photo\1.0

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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This is a hidden file so you need to show hidden files.

I don't know what version of windows you have because you have no info displayed in a sig so you will have to look up the process via google search.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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7 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

This is a hidden file so you need to show hidden files.

Hidden subfolders don’t show up in an Explorer window when you navigate to the parent folder, but I’ve never had to tell Windows to show hidden files and folders in order for me to view the contents of Application Data folders such as %AppData%\Affinity\Designer or %AppData%\Affinity\Photo.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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One of the first things I do when I install Windows on a system is unhide hidden folders.

There really should be shortcuts to the locations of these files in Prefs, this is a Pro app and Pro's NEED to tinker and tweak or just be curious.

There needs to be a serious overhaul and better management of assets like styles, fonts, symbols and brushes, with tag systems and grouping and removing the annoying category creation and not being able to rename it immediately without having to go back into the burger menu.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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8 minutes ago, αℓƒяє∂ said:

Hidden subfolders don’t show up in an Explorer window when you navigate to the parent folder, but I’ve never had to tell Windows to show hidden files and folders in order for me to view the contents of Application Data folders such as %AppData%\Affinity\Designer or %AppData%\Affinity\Photo.

I haven't personally used a windows machine for years, I find them clunky.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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You don't have to show the hidden files to access those files (but it's easier), since when you're at "C:\Users\_UserName_\" you just need to complete with "AppData" in the adress bar and hit enter to be in the folder, and you'll see the subfolders.

Our styles, macros, etc. are in :
C:\Users\_UserName_\AppData\Roaming\Affinity\Designer\1.0\user\objectstyles.propcol

raster_brushes.propcol file is huge, but I thinks it's only long to load when opening the app (Designer opened in ±20 sec. with a lot of brushes, etc. = 3.58 Go,  and Designer Beta — fresh installation, user folder = 42.8 Ko — opened in 6 secondes. (Memory usage: Designer = 848 232 K, Beta = 369 700 K).

 

 

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12 minutes ago, Wosven said:

You don't have to show the hidden files to access those files (but it's easier), since when you're at "C:\Users\_UserName_\" you just need to complete with "AppData" in the adress bar and hit enter to be in the folder, and you'll see the subfolders.

If you put %AppData% in the address bar, it will take you straight to your C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming folder. :)

 

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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Okay, I found them - thanks!!  That answers the first part of my question.  The second part is about the size of the various files.  If I have a LOT of assets, styles, brushes, etc.  Will that cause the program to slow down?  Is there a limit?

Windows 10 Home
Affinity Designer 1.6.4.104
Affinity Photo 1.6.4.104

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Only the developers can tell you if there’s a limit, MaryLou, but now that you’ve found those things you can answer your other question yourself by moving them out of that folder and checking for a noticeable improvement in performance.

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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I don't have that much stuff at the moment but I suspect it would take quite a lot to slow it down.  The reason I asked was, in another program that I used, I  had 15 years of graphics I made stored in the "Assets" area. It did not slow the system down because what you saw when looking at a given asset was a watered down thumbnail with a link to the asset itself. It loaded the actual asset  only when you clicked on the visual in the Assets panel.  I was wondering if maybe AD handled the files in a similar manner.

Thanks again for the help on the files location.  I actually knew that but somehow I didn't see them when I looked.  Maybe new glasses would help.

Windows 10 Home
Affinity Designer 1.6.4.104
Affinity Photo 1.6.4.104

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Teejay, I thought the same thing as you - I couldn't find my styles.  They are there but listed as objectstyles.propcol.  

Also, someone mentioned that I don't have any info in a sig file.  I went to my profile but not sure where to put that info.   Nothing specifically says "Sig"..

Windows 10 Home
Affinity Designer 1.6.4.104
Affinity Photo 1.6.4.104

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8 minutes ago, MaryLou said:

I went to my profile but not sure where to put that info.

You need to go to your Account Settings page, not your Profile page. There’s a Signature link on the left (or you can use the link in this post, of course).

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Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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3 hours ago, firstdefence said:

There needs to be a serious overhaul and better management of assets like styles, fonts, symbols and brushes, with tag systems and grouping and removing the annoying category creation and not being able to rename it immediately without having to go back into the burger menu.

Fonts should be managed by the OS, but it would be nice if we had better tools to manage in-app resources like styles, brushes, & so on. I doubt the devs would ever allow users to modify the propcol files directly (because their format is probably considered proprietary) but at the least there should be an easy way to move items between categories via drag & drop or the like.

Maybe this will be a version 2.0 feature?

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
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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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For some of them (like color palettes), XML would be fine, we could rename/reorder/add, etc. easily.
Or double panels or similar views where we can up/down, rename, drap here or there… I installed a lot of brushes, and I had to create new categories and dupplicate/move from one to another until my brushes panel look more "clean" since it was a mess with too many categories.

I had to recreate color palettes to add some color too, since the way to order them isn't really usefull… That's sure that we need specific tools to manage all those options. It could be a separate process/app, able to manage Designer or Photo (or Publisher) "options".

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3 minutes ago, Wosven said:

For some of them (like color palettes), XML would be fine, we could rename/reorder/add, etc. easily.

Maybe, but XML has some disadvantages like not being a very efficient way to store metadata on drives or providing quick access to it without using a lot of memory space to buffer it. Just guessing, but I suspect the propcol format is optimized to reduce file size & provide quick access without having to laod everything into memory at once.

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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Adobe use XML file to store some infos and I found it really easy and faster to modify/duplicate them than redoing  all in the original app.

There can be an interface for regular use and XML files for advanced users to do changes more efficiently on a larger scale.

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5 minutes ago, Wosven said:

There can be an interface for regular use and XML files for advanced users to do changes more efficiently on a larger scale.

There are indeed things like that built into the Mac OS, but it still requires a lot more file space to store metadata in both highly efficient binary & ussr-friendly text-based XML formats, considerable overhead to keep them in sync, & so on.

And of course, giving users direct access to what can be very complex metadata hierarchies & interrelationships means they can break things very easily unless they thoroughly understand how it all fits together ... & don't make any mistakes even if they do.

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
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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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Metadata is only text file, it's lightweight and can be open with any textEditor without problem. Look at inDesign .IDML file's weight compared to the original .INDD file (12 or 24 pages, I didn't opened it for checking) :
file_with_no_embedded_pics.indd = 25 596 Ko
file_with_no_embedded_pics.idml =  1 315 Ko

Lesser XML files with only few information would be more like few Ko.

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(Oups, second part, since I'm not sure editing will inform you of this)

 

I prefer to think people can learn and avoid doing stupid things than trying to break everything.
I remember long ago, when I was using Win 98 or similar, a cousin sending me an email asking me to delete some Windows file because someone told him it was a virus. I had the good reflex to check first on a security site database, and this way I learned it was a common hoax, and that deleting this file would be more anoying that helpfull.

It's the same as teaching people not to input password or credit card info on a chat for security reason, instead of trying to limit features on a program to prevent stupid errors.

Nowaday, people grew up with computer, they need to learn how to use it, it's better and it's always be usefull. I understand it's more difficult for older ones to learn such things, and I'm here to help, debug and de-virus things for them. But I espect young ones to learn more than clicking a button without understanding what happens or how their device works, at least a minimum about this.

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18 minutes ago, Wosven said:

I prefer to think people can learn and avoid doing stupid things than trying to break everything.

But you are not the company who supports these apps. They probably would prefer to avoid the responsibility of teaching users not to do those stupid things.

29 minutes ago, Wosven said:

Metadata is only text file, it's lightweight and can be open with any textEditor without problem.

That depends on the format of the file. Take a look at some of the Affinity propcol files -- they are very obviously not plain text files & use a lot of binary encoded data to pack more of it into fewer bytes. That also makes it possible to use things like indexing & offsets to make accessing any part of it much quicker than having to parse a file full of text strings & keep all that in memory.

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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I'd be happier if I could select multiple brushes, symbols, styles, assets etc and drag and drop from and to categories, create a category from selection and delete en masse. Tag by colour, shape and the like and have everything searchable. 

I think we need to donate loads of Cuke.

iMac 27" 2019 Somona 14.3.1, iMac 27" Affinity Designer, Photo & Publisher V1 & V2, Adobe, Inkscape, Vectorstyler, Blender, C4D, Sketchup + more... XP-Pen Artist-22E, - iPad Pro 12.9  
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Affinity Help - Affinity Desktop Tutorials - Feedback - FAQ - most asked questions

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