Zerene projects take long time to save (huge size)

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seta666
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Location: Castellon, Spain

Zerene projects take long time to save (huge size)

Post by seta666 »

Hi,

I do not know if I am missing something but Zerene projects are taking very long (10min+) to save, with huge siuze (40Gb +)
I am pretty sure it is because it is saving the individual files or something, must be something I am missing in the menu to change this behaviour

Javier

rjlittlefield
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Re: Zerene projects take long time to save (huge size)

Post by rjlittlefield »

This sounds like you are saving a project that has been created by the Lightroom plugin, on a different device from the "Temporary images location" that is being used by the plugin. In this case the source image files will be copied from the plugin's location to the device where the project is being saved.

A workaround is to make the "Temporary images location" be on the same device as where the project will be saved. That way the saving will be done by moving (renaming) the source image files, instead of copying them. This is much faster, consumes no additional space for a second copy of the image files, and will still allow full functionality of the saved project, including retouching from source.

Of course space will continue to be consumed for the saved source images.

To recover that space, you could delete the SourceImages folder within the project, or perhaps better, delete all files within that folder except for whichever one appears first in the list of Input Files. Either way, you will get some messages about missing source images when you re-open the saved project, and you will not be able to retouch from source. To avoid those messages and regain the ability to retouch from source, you would have to re-create the source images, in the same form they had originally been created by the Lightroom plugin, before re-opening the project.

--Rik

seta666
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Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 8:50 am
Location: Castellon, Spain

Re: Zerene projects take long time to save (huge size)

Post by seta666 »

Hi Rik,

I opened a thread here rather than contacting you directly so the information was available here for future reference.

I am not using Lightroom so that was not the problem, I normaly work with 16bit TIFF files generated from camera raw. For a 360 image project with 24mpx A7 that is 39GB

After reviewing the project folder I realised the slabing was set to saving the slabs; I work with quite a few of those but I never save them, just use them for retouching within the project. Maybe that is why it was taking so long to save the project.

The generated image folder also takes up quite a lot of space, 14GB for 52 files, but I guess this is just normal behaviour

rjlittlefield
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Re: Zerene projects take long time to save (huge size)

Post by rjlittlefield »

seta666 wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 3:18 am
The generated image folder also takes up quite a lot of space, 14GB for 52 files, but I guess this is just normal behaviour
Yes, this is normal. The .zsy format used for generatedimages has 32-bit floating point colors, so 12 bytes per pixel. Each file is twice as big as 16-bit TIFF.

To avoid long saving times in your case, set Options > Preferences > New Projects so that projects are created on the same device where they will eventually be saved. This allows all the project files to be saved by renaming instead of copying.

--Rik

seta666
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Joined: Fri Mar 19, 2010 8:50 am
Location: Castellon, Spain

Re: Zerene projects take long time to save (huge size)

Post by seta666 »

The issue was the slabing saving the files, everything works now as it should; if I save the project after the first stack then saving a project with multiple slabs is almost instant again.

I was going a bit nuts looking into preferences trying to find what was wrong.. :D

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Re: Zerene projects take long time to save (huge size)

Post by rjlittlefield »

seta666 wrote:
Wed Sep 22, 2021 4:46 am
The issue was the slabing saving the files, everything works now as it should; if I save the project after the first stack then saving a project with multiple slabs is almost instant again.
To explain that performance behavior...

Output images are always written into the generatedimages subfolder, within the main project folder.

When you save the project after the first stack, the project gets copied from the device where it was initially created, to the device designated by the save. The project is relatively small at that time so the save goes quickly. Then when you create new output images for the slabs, each of those gets created on the final device so no further copies are required by the Save Project.

In contrast, if you wait until after slabbing to do the save, then the slab outputs initially can get created on a different device, so they have to be copied by the Save Project.

In this scenario, the relevant setting would have been Options > Preferences > New Projects.

--Rik

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