LINK images (do not embed)

[Daniel Geiger]

Please LINK images, and do not embed the images. I made a one-page 40x44" poster, with a few images, and it clocks in at 2.72 GB (gigabytes) !!! A similar document in QuarkXPress is 10.4 MB (megabytes). The Publisher document is 200 times bigger! Creating larger books with lots of large high quality images will be impossible. My last book had over 1200 pages, with over 1000 figures.

[walt.farrell]

59 minutes ago, Daniel Geiger said:

The Publisher document is 200 times bigger!

Designer, I presume? Yes, I agree that having Serif formally support Linking in Designer (including the Resource Manager and automatic updating) would be good.

But in case you're not aware, linking in Designer is currently possible, in a clumsy manner. Unfortunately, Serif has said that it should not be possible and the options that allow it will be removed. But until then, you can do the following:

1. Place an image. It will be embedded.
2. Select the image and click the Replace Image button on the Context Toolbar.
3. On the Finder or File Explorer dialog that comes up, select the same file again. And, select to have it Linked rather than Embedded. On Windows you should see two radio buttons at the bottom of the dialog. On Mac, I think there's some kind of Options pulldown that will expose the Link vs Embed setting.

Notes:

1. There is a Resource Manager in Designer, but you cannot access it except when opening a document that contains a Linked image that is missing. That makes it hard to manage Linked images.
2. There is no support in Designer to automatically update your .afdesign document when a Linked image is changed externally. And because you cannot access the Resource Manager, you would have to know the image had been changed, and manually select it, and click on Replace image, and replace it with itself, to see the changes in your .afdesign document.

Both of those help demonstrate that the existing Linking support in Designer is incomplete, and the workaround is cumbersome to use (even beyond the steps needed to get the images linked in the first place). And that demonstrates even more the need for additional formal support for linking in Designer.

However, there is an additional, and simpler, workaroundsavailable if you also own Publisher. If you're interested I can describe it.

But if you don't own Publisher, here's a sample .afdesign document that may help you:
        empty-link-images.afdesign

It has a single artboard, but you could of course create more, or change other document settings. If you open it in Designer you should find that any files that you Place into it will be Linked rather than Embedded. However, notes 1 and 2 above still apply. So you should end up with a smaller .afdesign file due to the linking, but managing the document content will remain cumbersome.

Edited July 27, 2019 by walt.farrell
added more information, and a sample file

[carl123]

2 hours ago, walt.farrell said:

2. There is no support in Designer to automatically update your .afdesign document when a Linked image is changed externally. And because you cannot access the Resource Manager, you would have to know the image had been changed, and manually select it, and click on Replace image, and replace it with itself, to see the changes in your .afdesign document.

Just to add to this

1. If you are working in Designer and a linked file is updated in another application you will receive a pop-up message saying your linked file has changed.  The pop-up message has a "Close" button but automatically closes on its own after a few seconds (so easy to miss if you are not looking at the screen at the time)

2. If a linked file has been changed the next time you open Designer the changed linked file will be automatically updated in your document

[fde101]

Publisher does have the options to link images and manage them as linked.

99% of the time I prefer embedded images for my projects, but that's because I have a tendency to create project-specific images, add them to the document, then delete the original file.  I figure that keeping them embedded probably uses about the same amount of total disk space as having them sitting next to the document file, but gives me one file to keep track of instead of dozens or hundreds.

I actually damaged some of my QXP documents when I first started working with it because I didn't realize the files were being linked and deleted them thinking they were in the document and I no longer needed those external copies...  oops.

For a project in which the same image(s) would be re-used across documents, I would obviously want to work out an approach to linking those files.

[carl123]

10 minutes ago, fde101 said:

I figure that keeping them embedded probably uses about the same amount of total disk space as having them sitting next to the document file

Unfortunately, that has not been my experience (with APhoto) which is why I prefer to have my files linked

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/93621-why-doesnt-make-linked-copy-all-files-to-the-designated-link-destination/&do=findComment&comment=498426

 

[fde101]

11 minutes ago, carl123 said:

that has not been my experience (with APhoto)

Interesting...  probably a matter of a difference in how the compressed data is stored as the numbers presented in that thread are not wildly out of bounds.  Still, the small (percentage) inflation in size is not as big of a problem for me as the added requirement to juggle the separate files so I still prefer embedded for most of my projects.

[Mark Ingram]

On 7/27/2019 at 12:50 AM, Daniel Geiger said:

Please LINK images, and do not embed the images. I made a one-page 40x44" poster, with a few images, and it clocks in at 2.72 GB (gigabytes) !!! A similar document in QuarkXPress is 10.4 MB (megabytes). The Publisher document is 200 times bigger! Creating larger books with lots of large high quality images will be impossible. My last book had over 1200 pages, with over 1000 figures.

We would recommend that you use Publisher as it's specifically designed for this task (along with support for linked images).

[Joachim_L]

To keep a Publisher document nice and clean, avoid to place .psd, .svg, .afphoto, .afdesign. It seems to be, that most of files which are handled as documents increase the file size significantly. These are my observations.

[Nazario]

While its possible to create posters, documents etc in Designer, Designer is more for the creation of assets (logos, illustrations etc) to then be placed into Publisher. The same with Photo. Create your imagery then import to Publisher where you have full control of layout, links etc. 

I personally always link as it reduces duplicates when using the same assets again and again and its also much quicker to edit just one file and it update across the board.

[fde101]

1 hour ago, Joachim_L said:

To keep a Publisher document nice and clean, avoid to place .psd, .svg, .afphoto, .afdesign. It seems to be, that most of files which are handled as documents increase the file size significantly. These are my observations.

This is because those file types are currently always embedded even when configured as linked.  That is something the Affinity team has indicated they still intend to improve on in some future version.

[heyhey]

I would really like to be able to link files so that I can easily update multiple designs that share a single resource. I'm still trialing and don't see myself also purchasing publisher.

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, heyhey said:

I would really like to be able to link files so that I can easily update multiple designs that share a single resource. I'm still trialing and don't see myself also purchasing publisher.

Welcome to the Serif Affinity forums.

Right now you can get Publisher and Designer for the usual price of Designer alone. That would give you the function you really want. Along with several other worthwhile functions, including better control over text frame formatting, automatic flow of text between frames, automatic hyphenation, and Find & Replace for text (if text is important to you).