On 06.04.2014 at 04:52 A.M Gary Aitken wrote

I'm frustrated by large storage requirements for xcf files resulting from processing many jpg image files. [...]

Are there any plugins, or is any work being done / planned, on some means to save (even a selected set of) operations so the result can be reconstructed from the original? It would save me many GB of space.

Hi,

besides the original payload data (here: image information) every file format contains
additional technical information for the application's internal use. This explains it from a
technical point of view. From a user's point of view: yes, you are right. Thank you for pointing it out.

As far as I know there's at least a chance for improvement with the switch to GEGL in GIMP 2.10.
GEGL is a graphics library for non-destructive image editing. This means it internally stores the set
of processing commands instead of bulks of image data. User of RAW photo processors know
this as 'receipt'. Indeed, such a receipt can be stored in a very small file.
GEGL itself (separately from GIMP) stores receipts in XML files. For more information about a new,
GEGL-based file format for GIMP Mitch could be able to tell more.

Kind regards,

Sven

On Sun, Apr 6, 2014 at 6:52 AM, Gary Aitken wrote:

I'm frustrated by large storage requirements for xcf files resulting from processing many jpg image files. The processing is typically pretty simple, crop, curves, with no touch up. I don't mind the xcf size for images which required a lot of detail work, but it's crazy for the majority of them. Things which a raw processor encodes in a few KB turn into 60 MB; an 8x factor over the original file size.

Are there any plugins, or is any work being done / planned, on some means to save (even a selected set of) operations so the result can be reconstructed from the original? It would save me many GB of space.

Gary,

We don't like it either, which is why it's planned for the future. Some foundation has already been laid for that in the code, but it will take time. As we are volunteers, not paid developers, we can't tell you, when this will be available for end-users.

Alexandre