In my current workflow, I am selecting several frames at a time (each of which has a high resolution stock photo in it), and exporting them as 2X resolution jpgs. For some reason I haven’t been able to discern, some of these images (seemingly at random) are being exported at much lower detail than the original photo.
I’ve attached a screenshot of the issue. On the right is the high-res original photo inside of its frame. On the left is what I received after exporting that frame at 2X resolution. To put it in computer graphics terms, Figma is taking a low-res thumbnail and upsampling with nearest neigbor interpolation to the requested resolution, rather than using the full-detail image source and downsampling to the requested resolution.
These images are going on a website, so obviously its not acceptable to put pixelated thumbnails anywhere. This means that I have to check every photo for pixelation and re-export if I find it. This makes what should be an easy process very tedious.
I haven’t been able to find any definitive answers on why this happens. My coworkers tell me that I need to close other tabs/programs so that Figma has more memory available, but this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. For one, I have several GB of RAM available as I make these exports. For two, it seems to me that Figma should notify the user if and why it was unable to export at the correct level of detail, rather than silently providing the incorrect image.
Has anyone else encountered this issue? Is it a bug, or somehow the intended functionality? Is there some procedure I can follow to guarantee that Figma exports what I ask it to?
What is the size of the frame in Figma that you are exporting? If you are viewing the image on the right at 300% zoom but the actual size of the frame is small, the export will be small too. You need to view the Figma canvas at 100% zoom to see the actual size.
The frame was 600px x 725px, sized to exactly match the element we were putting the picture in. Then we 2X resolution export for high-density monitors, expecting Figma to either get those extra pixels from the original image, or to upsample the original image with a smoother bicubic interpolation if there aren’t enough.
Of course it’s understandable that it wouldn’t upsample an image; I can imagine how that could cause confusion with users who aren’t paying attention to the resolution of their source images.
However even if it did, that wouldn’t solve this issue shown in my screenshot, which is that Figma isn’t using all of the detail (“those extra pixels”) from the original image. If that was the intended functionality, then this is definitely some sort of bug.
Through testing, I’ve been able to answer one of my questions, so I thought I’d share.
Is there some procedure I can follow to guarantee that Figma exports [hi-res images with full detail]?
It seems that zooming close into one of the images of your selection forces Figma to load the full resolution version, which makes all of the detail available for the software when you give the command to export.
It would be nice if Figma checked and retrieved the full image for export regardless of your zoom level, but it’s an easy enough workaround.
