Five Things That Break When You Convert a PSD to Figma (and How to Handle Each)
Converting a PSD to Figma sounds like a file-format problem. It is really a feature-matching problem: Photoshop can do things Figma has no word for. Here are the five places an import actually goes sideways, and what to do about each one. This comes from building and running the PSD to Figma plugin, so the fixes are the ones we ship.
1. The font is not on your machine
A PSD references fonts. It does not contain them. If Figma cannot find the font, the text has to fall back to something else.
What to do: install the font before importing. If you cannot, the plugin falls back to Inter and names the missing font in the import report, so you know exactly which one to install. Swap it later and the lines settle.
2. Adjustment layers
Curves, Levels, Hue/Saturation. Figma has no adjustment layers at all.
What to do: accept that the effect gets rendered into the layer below and listed in the report. If you need the original adjustability, keep the PSD as the source of truth, or import that layer group as an image on purpose.
3. Bevel & Emboss and other layer styles with no twin
Drop shadows, inner shadows, glows, strokes and overlays map to Figma effects. Bevel & Emboss does not.
What to do: let the plugin bake those layers as images and read the report to see which layers were affected. Everything else stays an editable effect, so the shadow on your button is still a shadow you can change.
4. Images over 4096 pixels
Figma will not accept an image larger than 4096 pixels on a side. A big Photoshop canvas can easily exceed that, and a naive converter fails with an error that tells you nothing useful.
What to do: the plugin downscales oversized layers to fit before handing them to Figma, so the import completes. Keep a copy of the original if you need full resolution for print, and export back to PSD from Figma when you do.
5. Text that was rasterised for an effect
If a designer rasterised a headline to add a filter, the text is gone. It is pixels. No converter can recover it.
What to do: ask the sender for a version with live text, or keep an unrasterised copy on a hidden layer. The plugin imports hidden layers too, with visibility off, so a spare copy survives the trip.
Pick the right depth for the job
You do not always want everything editable. The plugin has four import modes, and each costs a small number of credits:
| Mode | What you get | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Fully editable | Live text, shapes, masks, gradients, styles | 2 |
| Editable text | Live text, everything else as images | 2 |
| Layers as images | Each layer as pixels, structure kept | 1 |
| Flattened | One image | 1 |
For reference artwork, Flattened is plenty. For a template your team will edit all year, Fully editable is the right call.
About privacy
The PSD is parsed inside the plugin sandbox on your computer. The artwork is never uploaded. The plugin sends limited usage details to Crafttor: the action, its mode, and the file or frame name and size.
Try it on your worst file
Drop your ugliest PSD on the plugin. You get a preview with no account. Press Login to Generate when you want it in Figma, and you start with 5 free credits.
Longer guides on Crafttor: