Pixelmator file created on desktop - layers flattened on iPad

[Greg McMahan]

I created a file on my desktop with layers. Copied it to iCloud documents folder. Opened in Pixelmator on my iPad, no more layers. File is one flattened image. Why?

[Andrius]

One of several reasons probably — the most likely one being that it has too many layers, but you should get a warning before you open the file saying as much. Did you not get any kind of notice about the file being flattened?

[Greg McMahan]

There are a lot of layers, the file is a little over 50mb. There was no warning. What is the size limit? My iPad shows about 16gb available memory.

[Andrius]

Got it, the size limit varies from device to device based on how much RAM it has (and not its available storage) — essentially, we have a limited amount of memory we can use and, unlike on a Mac, there's no swap memory to use when the physical memory runs out, which is why there's a hard limit on the number of layers you can add (and open). But the limit is on the total megapixel size of all the layers combined rather than just the number of layers, so you can have a hundred or more layers in a smaller image and maybe 10 or so layers in a 20-megapixel image. But this also varies significantly between devices — you can open larger files on the latest iPad Pro compared to, say, a first gen iPad Air.

[Greg McMahan]

That makes sense. I just tried with a smaller file and it opened with the layers.

[Heather Arsen]

This is good to know. I almost wish now that I’d gotten a 1tb iPad Pro so I’d have more ram

[Hayertjez]

Thank you Andrius for the explaination. It’s not impossible but depends on the file and iPad. Good spec to look out when buying new equipment.