File sizes

[Duncanwh]

I have just done a test on file sizes. I embedded images on to 10 A4 pages with the Picture Frame and Place Image Tools. Then I linked images on to 10 new A4 pages. Then I simply dragged images on to 10 new A4 pages.
After saving the files, I found they were all the same size. How come? Surely the file with the Linked images should be considerably smaller.

Duncan

[Steps]

Currently linked images are also embedded.

The link is just for recognizing updates to the original files.

[Jon Hubbard]

That will explain why my file size is so bloated on a 24 page document. The problem is that it makes the document really slow to work with and almost impossible to type text in.

Any work around on this?

[Joachim_L]

On 12/27/2018 at 5:52 PM, Steps said:

The link is just for recognizing updates to the original files.

It does not have to be it that way? Indesign detects changes to the image even when linked. I can't imagine how big my usual 400 pages manual with 1.600 images would be in the end. The Publisher file consumes disk space plus the same amount for the linked images. I know, disk space is cheap nowadays. But I started with DTP when a hard disk with 500 MB was ridiculously big, so I want everything to keep clean and small. Just my opinion ...

 

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Joachim_L said:

It does not have to be it that way?

No, it does not have to be that way, but that's the way it is. At least for now.

Serif is aware of our concerns with how Linked files are working, and perhaps that will change later in the beta process.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

I pasted the main story of a long book published in PagePlus = 332Kbytes with all images linked.

The Affinity Publisher file is 13.8 Mbytes. There are no images — just text, and less text than in the original. No index or contents, no master page text, no footnotes. The story was pasted from the clipboard as RTF after stripping all inline graphics, footnotes, and index marks. 

Compression with 7-Zip to 7z LZMA2 format, which offers better compression than plain Zip used by PagePlus, reduces the file size to 12.0 Mbytes. 

What is the reason for this? 

[Patrick Connor]

4 hours ago, Bhikkhu Pesala said:

 What is the reason for this? 

It's a different file format. They are designed for different programs & purposes. I expect that the saved spread previews are making the affinity files larger than you expected

[afdojo]

The unexpectedly large file size isn't a show-stopper for me but still quite a nuisance. The 200 images in my .afpub file are 'linked' but the file is still 1.5GB. I'm actually quite impressed with how responsive Publisher is with this large a document but it does cause several problems. I don't know for sure that the large file size is causing all of these problems but I didn't run into any of them until the file got over 1GB.

.. the fan in my Macbook runs a lot because Publisher is consuming 100%-200% of the CPU while I'm working.

.. I sync my Documents folder to Apple iCloud and since the uplink rate is about 1.5MB/sec, it takes 15-20 minutes to upload the file every time I save it.

.. Publisher just quits every now and then so I'm inclined to save frequently -- but see above :-(

My background is computers -- not publishing -- and in that world "linked" has a very specific meaning which is definitely not "embedded." Hopefully Affinity plans to actually link the images but if not, I wish they would call it "connected" or "coupled" or something else. Calling them "linked" is very confusing.