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File Sizes in Photo for Windows - 1.7.0 (split)


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Great update so far! But: What's up with file sizes? Open an image created with previous version of Photo or Designer and just save it again in 1.7, many of the .afphoto/.afdesign image files are becoming way bigger in terms of file size. In some cases file size quintuples!? I'm scared right now...

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@Pandorum Thanks for the report we will get back to you.

@Chris B I have split this post as it needs investigation

Patrick Connor
Serif Europe Ltd

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your previous self."  W. L. Sheldon

 

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Something is really wrong with saved afphoto files following the 1.7 update.

An afphoto file I saved the other day in AP 1.6 is 3,600 KB. The exported jpg from that afphoto file is only 3,324 KB while the original jpg from the camera is 3,161 KB.

I opened the same afphoto file today and did nothing but Save As with a different filename and the new afphoto file is now 37,285 KB. When I export the file to jpg it is 3,324 KB as expected. The two exported jpgs look identical in Faststone Image Viewer.

Surely AP 1.7 is not going to save all afphoto files at sizes 10 times larger than 1.6 afphoto files. 

Like @Pandorum I'm thinking I might be scared. At least I cannot use version 1.7 until this is fixed. Surely someone saw this during the year-long beta testing.

I also opened in AP a jpg file that is 3,494 KB in size. Without applying any edits at all I simply saved it as an afphoto file. The afphoto file is 11,781 KB. So at a minimum AP version 1.7 produces files 4 times larger than AP version 1.6 and 10 times larger if you apply any edits. 

Will we now need 10 times as much disk storage if we use AP to retain non-destructive afphoto files for future use? I do not recall anyone talking about this during the beta testing (I did not participate), nor is this listed as a new, improved feature of AP.

Edited by Granddaddy
Additional information added

Affinity Photo 2.4.1 (MSI) and 1.10.6; Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 (MSI) and 1.10.6. Windows 10 Home x64 version 22H2.
Dell XPS 8940, 16 GB Ram, Intel Core i7-11700K @ 3.60 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

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1 hour ago, Mark Ingram said:

Are you saving with history enabled?

No. And even if I would do so, this also happens when I just open a jpeg file in Photo and save it without any changes as afphoto file.

jpg: 3,3 MB
afphoto (1.6.5): 3,9 MB
afphoto (1.7.0): 8,6 MB

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2 hours ago, Chris B said:

Hi everyone,

In some cases, I'm actually seeing smaller file sizes. Would you mind attaching a file saved in 1.6 (untouched by 1.7) so I can look into this? 

Yes, I've noticed that, too. In some cases, the file sizes are getting smaller when saved with 1.7. But often it's the other way around. I have not been able to find any clue to the cause so far.

I've attached a simple Photo file, it contains just one layer from a jpg with an active selection + saved alpha channel. It has been created with an older version of Photo. When I open it in 1.7 and just save it as new file, it grows from 1.2 to 8.6MB.

lego-human.afphoto

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For those following this particular thread, note that file size is being discussed in at least two other threads in at least two different forums because it is unclear whether this is a bug or a feature of AP Version 1.7.

 

Affinity Photo 2.4.1 (MSI) and 1.10.6; Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 (MSI) and 1.10.6. Windows 10 Home x64 version 22H2.
Dell XPS 8940, 16 GB Ram, Intel Core i7-11700K @ 3.60 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

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On 6/6/2019 at 10:51 AM, Pandorum said:

Yes, I've noticed that, too. In some cases, the file sizes are getting smaller when saved with 1.7. But often it's the other way around. I have not been able to find any clue to the cause so far.

I've attached a simple Photo file, it contains just one layer from a jpg with an active selection + saved alpha channel. It has been created with an older version of Photo. When I open it in 1.7 and just save it as new file, it grows from 1.2 to 8.6MB.

lego-human.afphoto

Well, now with version 1.7.1 it got a bit better, but file sizes are still growing without any visible reason. My sample file still grows from 1.2 to 4.8MB...

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15 hours ago, Pandorum said:

Well, now with version 1.7.1 it got a bit better, but file sizes are still growing without any visible reason. My sample file still grows from 1.2 to 4.8MB...

This was potentially a risky fix to squeeze in before the release of Publisher. I was told that it should be much better but the files will still increase somewhat. I'm not sure if this will be looked at again once Publisher has been released but we should monitor it.

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46 minutes ago, Chris B said:

I'm not sure if this will be looked at again once Publisher has been released but we should monitor it.

Of course I can well imagine that with the release of Publisher for the time being there will be not much room for bugfixing the other products at the moment. Nevertheless, this problem is not solved yet and I think it has a huge impact for those who are using Photo in a professional way. This bug/issue should on no account simply be left behind.

I have already read many dissatisfied comments on this issue in different Facebook groups. And I myself currently use Photo only in a limited way, when the result is to be exported as jpeg/png image. But I won't use anymore the afphoto format for the time being. Think of all the photographers with their hundreds or thousands of photographs, the creative content creators with large complex image compositions, cloud users, etc. If the native afphoto format suddenly and incomprehensibly inflates files many times over, this has a negative impact in multiple ways without any added value. I very much hope that this issue will be addressed later.

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Serif's inadequate response to the many bugs introduced into Affinity Photo 1.7 is changing my opinion of the company and its product. Bugs reported one year ago and never fixed are said to have "fallen through the net". It is said the beta testing process is being examined. It is said the problem of ballooning file sizes was not noticed because it involved only compressed files like jpeg. I'm just an amateur with 150,000 digital photos and scanned images accumulated in the past 17 years. Almost all are compressed jpeg files. The bugs or features we are discovering in Ver 1.7 were apparent within the first moments of use of Ver 1.7. Do Serif's beta testers not use jpeg files?

We are also told that the ballooning file sizes are a feature added to Affinity Photo to accommodate the needs of Affinity Publisher. The huge files are said to be an inadvertent effect or an unanticipated consequence of developing Affinity Publisher. 

I've been using Affinity Photo exclusively for about 18 months. I was delighted with most of it and had been looking forward to incremental improvements. But a year of testing and development of Photo has resulted in a product that is now worse for my purposes. And now we are told the bugs either can not or else will not be fixed because Affinity Publisher is so important. Affinity Photo seems to be of little importance at Serif.

I'm now looking for some reason not to uninstall Ver 1.7.1 and return to Ver 1.6 and let it go at that. Ver 1.6 satisfies my basic needs and gives me access to powerful tools, though it lacks many of the niceties in competing products that appeal to amateurs like me.

On top of that, despite the generally powerful features of THE Forum software, it too exhibits buggy behavior. My post above dated June 10 includes a graphic that the Forum software grabbed from a followup post on the thread I linked to. That reply post no longer appears in the thread and the link above indicates there is only one reply (that being the reply I posted this morning asking what happened to the replies that had been there earlier). 

I do have some more details about file sizes to add to this thread after I installed Photo Ver 1.7.1 this morning. I had previously uploaded most of these files to Serif while they were looking into this unexpected problem.

image.png.416d9b25738cb2f6f4880b4d7e740813.png

The original photo of my garden taken in June 2012 (IMG_0170.JPG) is about 7 MB

Opening the file in Photo 1.6, doing nothing at all to it and then saving it produced a file not much larger than 7 MB. 

Opening that Ver 1.6 afphoto file in Ver 1.7.0, doing nothing to it and then saving it resulted in a 60 MB file. This was the feature of 1.7 that had not been discovered by Serif because files ballooning by a factor of 10 happened only with compressed image files, like jpegs.

Opening the Ver 1.6 afphoto file in Ver 1.7.1, doing nothing to it and then saving it produces a 30 MB file. That's still 4 times larger than the Ver 1.6 afphoto file

Opening the original jpeg in Ver 1.7.0, doing nothing to it and saving it as afphoto produces an 18 MB file, more than 2-1/2 times the size of the Ver 1.6 afphoto file. The same happens with Ver 1.7.1.

It appears that henceforth all afphoto files will be at least 2 to 3 times larger than in the past. Should you wish to revisit some of your older Ver 1.6 afphoto files to add or adjust your non-destructive adjustments, expect the files to increase in size by at least a factor of 4.

This change in the afphoto file format is not there to provide any benefit for Affinity Photo users. Rather it has something to do with developing Affinity Publisher.

 

 

 

Affinity Photo 2.4.1 (MSI) and 1.10.6; Affinity Publisher 2.4.1 (MSI) and 1.10.6. Windows 10 Home x64 version 22H2.
Dell XPS 8940, 16 GB Ram, Intel Core i7-11700K @ 3.60 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

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I reworked this Tutorial:

The filesize of the .afphoto file is 113 MB, the original jpg from the wall is 5,7 MB. The other Things are text and the Filters Gaussian Blur and displacement. I`m wondering too why the size of the afphoto files is so big.
This is the result of my Tutorial rework.

test.thumb.jpg.e18622144a84b2cfd813c69abeca7de8.jpg

I believe that the Filter Gaussion Blur blows up the afphoto file.
I tested it with one of my Photos (jpg) from my Nikon D 5500 which is ~11 MB.
I opened it in Photo and saved it without any editing, only open and save as afphoto. The filesize is now ~21 MB.
If i edit it only with the Filter Gaussian Blur with 22px it goes up to ~32 MB.

But now I've found something else that's strange.
For this two following  tests i used the same image and both times 22 px in the Filter Gaussian Blur...
If i use the Gaussian Blur from Menu Filter, the size goes up to ~32 MB
If i use the Live Filter Gaussian Blur, the size is ~21 MB

Have a nice day.
Ich wünsche einen schönen Tag.

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