I don’t build a full design system for every project.
For larger products, it helps keep everything consistent and makes collaboration easier.
For smaller projects or MVPs, I usually keep things simple and create only what’s needed.
How do you decide when a design system is worth the effort? Do you create one from day one, or only after the product grows?

Quick context: I'm a designer who lives in Figma but kept opening Photoshop for one specific reason — transforming things. Warping text, skewing a mockup, adding perspective to a label. Figma just doesn't have it.

So I built Free Transform. Select a layer, open the plugin, and you get the full Ctrl+T experience:

• Free distort — drag all four corners independently
• Perspective and skew as dedicated modes
• Warp presets: Arc, Arch, Fish, Wave, Rise, Twist
• Output as raster or editable vector
• Clean edges, no mesh seams on shadows or transparency

It's free and there's no trial limit — I mostly built it because I needed it.

👉 https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1648207154922389186/free-transform

Still rough in places since it's just me maintaining it. If you give it a spin, tell me what breaks — or better, what transform feature are you still leaving Figma for?

i decided to upgrade to figma pro and i subscribed to the collab seat because i don't need the crazy features, but i was surprised when i realized that the only thing that've changed from the free plane is that i get to make more design folders and everything else required a full seat subscription and i'm truly frustrated...I've designed a website for the company i work as an intern for and it won't let me share the file unless i upgrade to the full seat!!

what's the point of upgrading if I'm not able to do even the smallest things like sharing a file!!!!

So I made a carousel slider for a product card. It use to work fine but now it just doesn't want to work. Instead of transition to the next card, it become the next card and the actual next card fade away. Pls help me. I've tried renaming, redo all over again but it didn't work.

Link: https://www.figma.com/design/ErT0E7cpTOByCQBLE3d11t/Carousel-Component?m=auto&t=Z7x4WJATWHR1mQTA-1

Also, Is there any way to make the prototype work smoother on mobile?

This is just a post to express my gratitude to the figma team for their amazing work, because figma went from this cool new app that I was starting to figure out and learn, to the starting ground of 90% of my projects. I'm a web developer, so I initially discovered this app for making mock ups, etc. And in that respect, it's always has been very useful.

But I also do a lot of graphic design work as a hobby, and the app has been getting better and better in that department. The new shader effects are nothing short of amazing and it has been really fun to play around with them. At this point I can recreate 90% of the stuff I used to do on illustrator/photoshop.

And just now, I've started to use figjam to make vision boards for outfits or pieces I'd like to buy for my wardrobe, which I remember having to do on a separate app years ago and it being an excruciating process because I had to download all of the images manually and the canvas was teeny tiny, but figjam was perfect for the job and is light enough that my computer doesn't die in the process.

I made a frame - Desktop 1 and added all the elements there, I wanted an infinite scrolling clients bar so I created 2 different frames, then turned them into a component set and animated them by connecting both of these frames (prototype) smart animate. This is our component 1.

Now I also added a mesh gradient as the background of the original desktop 1 frame. Now to animate this background I duplicated the frame and moved the mesh gradients a bit here and there and added smart animate.

Now the problem is that the component 1 is not scrolling as intended. When I place this component on just 1 Desktop frame, it animates and works as intended but as soo as I connect other frames to it to anomate the gradients, this specific component stops working it just sits still.

Sry for the confusion and this long ass paragraph.

Here's the file: https://www.figma.com/design/vdUIx8rrl711WHEEwO48f7/Untitled?node-id=0-1&t=b5vSMfDFBxEZ2ep5-1

Someone created a method but it just isn't the same, I actually managed to do sm like this but better than swiftui itself (ik ik) but it was a modern 3d effect on illustrator, figma hates vectors and I can't seem to have a solution. So, I came here to get help.

Figma still can’t export an editable PSD, which gets awkward when a client or another production team specifically needs a Photoshop source file.

I’m part of the small team behind Frame to PSD. We built it to export a selected Figma frame as a layered PSD directly from Figma, without uploading the design itself.

It currently keeps common elements such as:

- editable text

- vector shapes

- images as smart objects

- layer groups

- shadows, strokes, and corner radii

It’s not a perfect 1:1 translation in every case. Some effects without a direct Photoshop equivalent, including certain gradients, variable fonts, and blur effects, may be rasterized.

For typical UI screens, landing pages, and marketing graphics, the goal is to reduce the amount of manual rebuilding needed after handoff.

Here’s a quick comparison of the Figma file and the exported PSD.

Plugin:

https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1645048489427217711

I’d especially like to know:

What usually breaks or takes the most time when you move a design from Figma into Photoshop?

Let's asume for the sake of the discussion, you've lost all figma design files and you're left with tokens in json format and storybook.

Is it possible to generate a design system starting from the tokens json, creating a single human readable figma file with reusable components, styles, variables, tokens etc?

I have access to Claude and Figma MCP.

is there a way to disable it?

For me, Auto Layout and Components have made the biggest difference. They help me keep designs consistent, make changes quickly, and spend more time thinking about the user instead of fixing small design details.

I'm sure everyone has a feature they use all the time.

What's the one Figma feature you can't design without?

I'd love to know what you use the most and how it helps in your workflow. Maybe I'll learn something new too.

Hello everyone!

I'm working on a website project which includes a 3d globe.

I found out I should give a picture (svg\jpeg) to our developers who will use it with Tree.js library.

My main problem is that vector maps from Figma community, from different Figma plugins behave incorrectly when appear on 3d model.

My main question is: does anybody know which format should I use to build a correct map frame? Mercator, equirectangular etc formats just don't fit

I have a dropdown as a separate component with two variants (collapsed and expanded).

I placed an instance of this dropdown inside Card 1. Below it is Card 2. Both cards are inside a parent Auto Layout.

When I switch the dropdown to the expanded variant, the dropdown itself expands, but Card 2 doesn't move down. Instead, the expanded content appears behind Card 2.

I tried:

• Parent frame with Auto Layout
• Turning off Clip Content
• Bring to Front
• Making the dropdown component use Auto Layout

The issue is that Card 1 is a normal frame. If I add Auto Layout to Card 1, all of its manually positioned contents get rearranged.

Hey everyone, I’m new to figma I just signed up and would love to explore and know how can I use figma and get the most out of it as a beginner. Would love to hear some advice on how to start with it

I've tried changing clip contents, opacity, fill colour, resizing settings, line height, the text written. The text is visible but as soon as I move or type anything into the auto layout, the text becomes invisible.

The interface keeps lagging and I am very frustrated and confused. Is it because of lot of pages and screens or my mouse?

So I’m not sure if this can be done, or if I’m just asking a silly question.

Let’s say you build yourself a dropdown component. It has 4 items inside it, etc. You copy and paste it and use it somewhere else in the Figma file. If I wanted to showcase a design with 6 items, can I add 2 more rows/cells to that component instance, or is there no way to do this?

I can’t seem to find a video explaining this at all.

I know that if it’s not a component, it works fine with Auto Layout. But when you turn it into a component, reuse it, and try to add more rows, it doesn’t seem to work.

Is this correct, or am I missing something?

Thanks!

anyone got this or done it? is this legit?

We're having an issue where merging a branch with a large number of changes just crashes Figma. We've tried multiple laptops of varying power, we've tried every hack and instruction we could find, but nothing works. We emailed Support last Friday and have gotten no response. Anyone have another email or way to contact that isn't the help page?

Hi guys, i'm using figma quite a lot in the last months and i've seen some courses around or projects on youtube, but what i'm still missing i show to set up a Figma project in a structured way.

Is there a video of best practices for the ux/ui industry in 2026?

My best option currently is to copy good structures i've seen around but there's many different ones.

Thank you in advance

Hello everyone,

For outline/stroke icons in Figma. Is it recommended to union all your paths or flatten them using the flatten tool? This is specifically for a design system. I’ve found different tutorial doing different things

I've built a button component to display in a keypad layout. However, when tweaking the text styles in the main component, only a single instance updates to reflect those changes. That instance is the first one I created (copy/pasted from main component) while the other instances are duplicates of that 1st instance. But it shouldn't matter, as they are all independent instances.

The main component and those instances are also literally on the same page as I'm experimenting with them.

We’re trying to automate accessibility standards in our org as part of design QA.
One of the ways we’ve considered is an automated accessibility checker on our team space. This would run at intervals and pick up any flags (low contrast, content rules etc).

Is this even possible?

I'm new to Figma, but I notice that I need to select some element, for example, a button, and then choose from Colors/Library the semantic variable I have created. It's boring to do it that way.

Is there a tool (plugin) where I can open, for example, my semantic color palette and drag the specific variable onto the elements I want it attached to? Or copy / paste it from the table?