Adding layers in Windows 11's Paint greatly increases RAM usage

As you might know already, Microsoft updated Windows 11’s Paint with layers, and the feature is getting closer to Photoshop. Adding layers in Paint is now possible, and it can greatly help you work faster and more efficiently on this seemingly forgotten app.

Plus, if you couple it with the recent background removal feature, this effectively turns Paint into a very useful tool to use for content creation, web design, you name it. And it’s free.

But, as lovely as it sounds, it seems that for now, adding multiple layers in Paint greatly increases RAM usage, and it will greatly slow your Windows 11 device. Spotted by Windows enthusiast, @XenoPanther, the more layers you add, the slower your device will be.

Adding a new layer in Microsoft Paint will increase RAM usage by 2-4MB.

As the feature was only released recently, there is a chance this is just a bug, and Microsoft will improve it in the future. So you need to take this into account.

It would be a bit ironic, though. Paint has been getting a lot of love, recently, and it seems, according to the latest reports, that the app will also get an AI tool, called Cocreator, which will allow you to easily sketch and draw, with AI at your side. So, it’s a bummer that this bug exists.

Microsoft Paint can easily crash your PC if you add multiple layers

We’ve tried it and, yes, unfortunately, it slowed our PC to the point it received a blue screen of death. However, you need to know that this only happens if you add tens to hundreds of layers. And, if your device is already buffed up, you shouldn’t run into this issue.

But for regular devices, working on complex projects that require tens of layers, this might be a serious issue.

Plus, when we received the screen of death, we only added empty layers. And it still crashed. Assuming these layers have elements on them, they could make your device even slower.

A second test revealed that adding tens of empty layers in Paint has quite an impact on RAM usage, as you can see below.

And if you end up adding even more elements and using other features, the whole process can be incredibly laggy. Insiders, such as @XenoPanther, revealed just how laggy it can get.

Sure, you won’t end up using thousands of layers on a Paint project, but who knows?