Working with Projects

A project is a self-contained workspace. Everything you arrange while working on one idea stays together in it: the canvas and its layers, the workflows you have open, the panel layout, your prompt history, and the gallery boards that collect the project’s images and videos. Open the project again later, on the same computer or another one, and it comes back exactly as you left it.

Invoke saves projects automatically on the server, so there is no Save button to remember. You can keep several projects open at once and switch between them in a keystroke.

Why use projects

• Pick up where you left off. Closing the browser, reloading the page or moving to another computer does not lose your arrangement. The Home page offers your most recent project with a single Resume button.
• Keep unrelated work apart. A character study, a product shoot and a video experiment can each have their own canvas, workflows, layout and boards, instead of competing for one workspace.
• Switch without waiting. Generations keep running when you switch to another project. Their results still land in the project that started them.
• Find results easily. Each project’s images and videos collect in its own boards — an Inbox for new results, plus any boards you create inside it — rather than piling up in one long gallery.
• Back up and share work. A project can be exported as a single .invk file that includes its images and videos, and imported on any Invoke installation.

What a project keeps

Saved with each project	Shared by all your projects
Canvas layers and settings	Installed models
Open workflows, and which one is active	Your workflow library
Panel layout and floating widgets	Saved layout presets
Prompt history, and the Invoke routing (source and destination)	Preferences, theme and hotkeys
Widget settings you change inside the project, such as gallery filters or the NSFW checker	Your defaults for those settings
The Preview’s Auto-switch mode	Boards in the Library
The project’s boards and the images and videos on them	Generate recipes

Widget settings, including the Generate widget’s Use CPU noise, NSFW checker and Invisible watermark (they apply to every generation in the project, Canvas included), use the project’s own value where you changed it inside the project, otherwise your default, otherwise Invoke’s. Set your defaults on the Launchpad under Preferences. A change made in an open project applies to that project only and marks the setting with a dot; click the dot to make the value your default (Use as my default) or to drop it and follow your default again (Follow my default). Settings that apply to the whole server say so in Settings.

Undo history is not saved. It lasts only while the project is open in your browser, so reloading the page or closing the project starts a fresh history.

Starting a project

The Home page is the first thing you see when Invoke opens. It shows the project you edited most recently under Pick up where you left off, a row of Recent projects with your pinned projects first, and tiles for starting something new. If your projects cannot be loaded, Home and Projects say so with a Retry button instead of showing an empty library.

To skip Home, set On startup, open to Most recent project in Settings (Behavior). Invoke then reopens the projects you had open, or the project you edited last if you had none open. A link to a specific page still opens that page. While it opens them, the loading screen offers Stay on the Launchpad. If that work did not finish opening the last time Invoke started, Invoke opens the Launchpad instead, once, and says why, so a project that fails to open never traps every launch.

To create a project, click New project. The arrow beside it (Choose how to start) offers starting points that open the project with a layout suited to the task:

Start	Opens with
Generate from text	The Compose layout, ready to generate
Edit on canvas	The Edit layout, with the canvas in front
Upscale an image	The Compose layout, set up for upscaling
Generate a video	The Video layout
Build a workflow	The Workflow layout, for the workflow editor

The starting point only chooses the initial layout. Every tool remains available, and you can rearrange the workspace at any time.

New projects are called Project Name #1, Project Name #2 and so on. Give yours a meaningful name early (see Renaming), because the name also heads the project’s boards in the gallery.

Switching between projects

The name of the active project appears in the top bar. Click it, or press Ctrl+P (⌘+P on macOS), to open the project switcher. It lists:

• Open projects: every project open in this session, with a progress ring on any that is generating. Choose one to switch to it.
• Recent: up to five other projects you edited lately.
• New project and Open project, which lists every saved project that is not already open.

The switcher also carries commands for the active project: Rename…, Copy project ID, Export, Close and Delete project…. Copy project ID puts the project’s ID on the clipboard.

The shortcut works even while you are typing in a prompt box. You can rebind it in the hotkey settings, where it is called Open project switcher.

Closing a project

Close removes a project from the open list without deleting anything. It stays in your library, ready to reopen from the Projects page or the switcher. Closing the last open project returns you to Home. A project that is still generating cannot be closed until its queued runs finish.

Where your images go

Boards belong to projects. Every project has an Inbox, created with it, where new results land; you can add more boards to a project to sort its work, and they belong to that project alone. Boards that should be available from every project — reference photos, control images, style tests — live in the Library, which the gallery shows beneath the open project’s boards.

The gallery’s board list is grouped by this: first the open project’s boards, headed by the project’s name, with Inbox pinned at the top; then Library, with Uncategorized pinned at the top for media that is on no board. Each group has its own + button, so where a new board goes is decided by which one you press.

New results go to the project’s Inbox until you choose another board under Saving to in the Gallery header, so browsing other boards never moves them; turn on Follow the selected board there to send them to whichever board you view. See Choosing where new media goes. When a project is first created, imported or duplicated, its Inbox is selected. The project remembers your choice of destination.

The destination is fixed when you press Invoke. Switching to a different project or board while a job runs does not redirect its results.

Boards belonging to your other projects are hidden from the gallery to keep it focused. To see them, turn on Other projects’ boards in the gallery’s board filters: they appear under Other projects, grouped by project. The setting is remembered separately for each project.

A project’s Inbox is managed through its project: renaming the project renames it, and it cannot be renamed, moved, archived or deleted on its own. Its menu offers Export project (.invk) instead. The project’s other boards are ordinary boards: rename, archive or delete them, or choose Move to… from their menu to move them to the Library or into another project.

See the gallery for more about boards.

Saving and syncing

Changes save to the server automatically, about half a second after you stop making them. If the connection drops, your browser keeps the unsaved changes and Invoke retries until the save goes through. The Autosave status in the status bar shows the current state, for example Saved or Saving…; hover over it for when the project last saved and which open projects need attention. The workflow toolbar shows it too, for example Project saved to the server or Saving project….

Because projects live on the server, the same project can be open in two browser tabs or on two computers. If both change it before either has saved, Invoke shows a Project changed elsewhere banner and lets you decide:

• Save as new project keeps your version as a separate copy, so nothing is lost.
• Use server version discards this tab’s edits in favour of the saved version.
• Export local draft downloads your version as a file before you choose.

A similar banner appears if a project you have open is deleted from another tab or computer. Your work stays available until you choose what to do with it.

The banner shows above the project it concerns. While any open project is waiting for your decision, the status bar reads Autosave: Needs attention: hover it to see which projects and why. The project switcher marks those projects Needs attention; switch to each one to see its banner. Your other projects keep saving in the meantime.

Tip

To avoid conflicts, work on a project in one tab at a time. Use the switcher to move between projects within that tab.

Managing your projects

The Projects page lists everything you have saved. Reach it from the Home page (View all projects), from the Projects section alongside Home, or through the Projects entry in the top-left app menu.

• Search projects… filters by name.
• Sort by orders the list by Last edited (the default), Date created or Name.
• Grid view and List view switch between cover cards and a compact list.
• Projects are grouped under Pinned, Open now, Today, Earlier this week, Earlier this month and Older. Searching or sorting by name shows a single list instead.

Each project’s cover is chosen automatically from its newest result, or from its top canvas layer when it has no results yet.

Right-click a project, or use its Actions button, for Open, Pin, Rename…, Duplicate, Export, Delete intermediates… and Delete…. Pinned projects stay at the top of the list. Your sort order, view and pins are remembered.

Renaming, duplicating and deleting

Rename… changes the project name; its Inbox and the heading of its boards in the gallery follow.

Duplicate creates a complete copy called “name copy”, including copies of every image and video on each of the project’s boards. Use it to try a different direction without disturbing the original.

Delete… removes the project permanently. There is no trash to recover it from.

• The project’s canvas, workflows, layout and settings are deleted.
• Its Inbox is deleted too, but the images and videos on it are kept: they move to Uncategorized in the gallery.
• If the project has other boards, the dialog asks what to do with them: keep them in the Library, with everything on them, or also delete them, which removes only the board folders: their images and videos move to Uncategorized. Deleting a project never deletes an image.
• A project that is still generating cannot be deleted until its runs finish. The notice that says so offers the queue (or, on the Launchpad, the project) so you can wait for them or cancel them.

If you only want to tidy the switcher, Close the project instead of deleting it.

Generation also leaves temporary files behind in each project. Delete intermediates… reclaims that space safely; see Intermediates.

Exporting and importing

Export packages a project into a single .invk file named after it. The file contains the project itself, every image and video on each of its boards, and any other media the project uses, such as reference images, so it opens complete on another installation, boards and all. Temporary intermediates are left out. If a board cannot be placed in the imported project, Invoke says so and leaves that board, with everything on it, in the Library, where you can move it in from its menu.

Before exporting, Invoke asks whether to Include font files used by text layers. It is off by default. Leave it off unless you have permission to redistribute the fonts; recipients can install or replace missing fonts themselves.

If some media is no longer available, the export still completes and reports how many items it could not include. A project with changes that have not reached the server yet cannot be exported until it reconnects.

To bring a project in, click Import… on the Home or Projects page, or use Open project in the switcher, and choose a .invk file. Import always creates a new project, so importing the same file twice gives you two independent copies, and it never overwrites an existing project. The imported project opens straight away. Files from older versions of Invoke that saved canvas projects differently cannot be imported.

Export is also the simplest way to back up a project you care about, or to hand one to someone else. There is no other way to share a project, because projects belong to a single account.

Workflows in a project

A project can hold several workflows. Each is saved as part of the project and changes automatically along with it; your workflow library changes only when you save a workflow to it on purpose.

In the Workflow Library dialog, This project lists the project’s own workflows, while Browse and Yours list bundled templates and your saved library. Opening a library workflow adds a copy to the current project. Fork into new project copies a workflow into a brand-new project of its own.

Making the most of projects

• One project per piece of work. Create a project for each client job, series or experiment, rather than doing everything in one. Each keeps its own layout and boards, so switching tasks means switching projects.
• Name projects as you create them. Names make the Projects page searchable and head the boards in your gallery.
• Pin what you’re actively working on. Pinned projects stay at the top of the Projects page no matter how many others you create.
• Duplicate before a big change. A duplicate is cheap insurance when you want to explore a different direction.
• Queue work, then switch. Start a long render or a batch, switch to another project with Ctrl+P, and keep working. The progress ring in the switcher shows when it is done, and the results wait in the original project’s Inbox. To see only the active project’s jobs in the Queue widget, set Show jobs from to Active project in Settings.
• Close projects you’re not using. It keeps the switcher short and costs nothing: the project stays in your library.
• Export milestones. Exporting a .invk file gives you a self-contained snapshot to archive or share.
• Clean up occasionally. Long-running projects accumulate temporary files; run Delete intermediates… from the project’s menu to reclaim disk space.

Things to know

• Projects belong to one account. With multiple users enabled, each person sees only their own projects, and there is no project sharing. Export and import a .invk file to pass a project to someone else.
• Undo history is not saved with the project; it is cleared when you reload or close it.
• Invoke needs the server to open projects. If it cannot reach the server, a Projects are temporarily unavailable screen offers to retry and to export any unsaved work your browser is holding.
• Newer projects need a newer Invoke. A project saved by a newer version of Invoke shows Requires a newer Invoke and cannot be opened until you upgrade. Some features raise this requirement for good: once a project has had a Noise, Texture, Clarity or Dehaze adjustment on the canvas, versions of Invoke without those adjustments refuse to open it, even after you remove the adjustment.
• Size limits. A project file can be up to 2 GB, with up to 20,000 files. Export reports a project that is too large to package.
• Clear saved data…, in its own warning area under Data & workspace in Settings, deletes all of your projects and settings at once, and cannot be undone. Its confirmation says how many projects go, links to Projects so you can export the ones you want first, and asks you to type DELETE. Images and videos are kept: project boards move to the Library and Inbox items to Uncategorized.