InvokeAI/docs-old/features/canvas_projects.md

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Canvas Projects

:material-folder-zip: Canvas Projects

Save and Restore Your Canvas Work

Canvas Projects let you save your entire canvas setup to a file and load it back later. This is useful when you want to:

• Switch between tasks without losing your current canvas arrangement
• Back up complex setups with multiple layers, masks, and reference images
• Share canvas layouts with others or transfer them between machines
• Recover from deleted images — all images are embedded in the project file

What Gets Saved

A canvas project file (.invk) captures everything about your current canvas session:

• All layers — raster layers, control layers, inpaint masks, regional guidance
• All drawn content — brush strokes, pasted images, eraser marks
• Reference images — global IP-Adapter / FLUX Redux images with crop settings
• Regional guidance — per-region prompts and reference images
• Bounding box — position, size, aspect ratio, and scale settings
• All generation parameters — prompts, seed, steps, CFG scale, guidance, scheduler, model, VAE, dimensions, img2img strength, infill settings, canvas coherence, refiner settings, FLUX/Z-Image specific parameters, and more
• LoRAs — all added LoRA models with their weights and enabled/disabled state

How to Save a Project

You can save from two places:

1. Toolbar — Click the Archive icon in the canvas toolbar, then select Save Canvas Project
2. Context menu — Right-click the canvas, open the Project submenu, then select Save Canvas Project

A dialog will ask you to enter a project name. This name is used as the filename (e.g., entering "My Portrait" saves as My Portrait.invk) and is stored inside the project file.

How to Load a Project

1. Toolbar — Click the Archive icon, then select Load Canvas Project
2. Context menu — Right-click the canvas, open the Project submenu, then select Load Canvas Project

A file dialog will open. Select your .invk file. You will see a confirmation dialog warning that loading will replace your current canvas. Click Load to proceed.

What Happens on Load

• Your current canvas is completely replaced — all existing layers, masks, reference images, and parameters are overwritten
• Images that are already present on your InvokeAI server are reused automatically (no duplicate uploads)
• Images that were deleted from the server are re-uploaded from the project file
• If the saved model is not installed on your system, the model identifier is still restored — you will need to select an available model manually

Good to Know

• No undo — Loading a project replaces your canvas entirely. There is no way to undo this action, so save your current project first if you want to keep it.
• Image deduplication — When loading, images already on your server are not re-uploaded. Only missing images are uploaded from the project file.
• File size — The .invk file size depends on the number and resolution of images in your canvas. A project with many high-resolution layers can be large.
• Model availability — The project saves which model was selected, but does not include the model itself. If the model is not installed when you load the project, you will need to select a different one.