how do you copy an CALayer?

I haven't tried this with CALayer specifically, but I know you can perform a deep-copy by taking advantage of NSCoding:

CALayer *layer = [NSKeyedUnarchiver unarchiveObjectWithData:[NSKeyedArchiver archivedDataWithRootObject:layer]];

I'm not sure how copying them would really help with performance, though.

CALayer doesn't have a built in -(id)copy method. I'm not sure why. It's not difficult to gin up your own however. Create a CALayer category and write your own copy method. All you have to do is instantiate and manually get the public ivars/properties from the original and set to the new copy. Don't forget to call [super copy]

BTW, CALayer is an object. You can add it to an NSArray.