Exporting frames PDF with lossless PNG raster images?

Hi @Howard_Kung, Thank you for getting in touch regarding exporting frames to PDF. I completely understand where you’re coming from.

We appreciate sharing your experience about being able to export uncompressed PDF files in the past! I’ve came across a forum thread titled Launched: Export Compressed PDFs, where one of our engineers recently mentioned an update that increases the compression for PDF files.
I encourage you to take a moment to check out this thread, particularly the last six comments. They might provide some useful insights.

The current issue you’re experiencing might be due to the fact that PDF files compress and rasterize vector graphics, which can affect the quality and depth of your original design.
For exports, we generally recommend using PNG instead of PDF, especially when image quality, transparency, and web compatibility are top priorities. For more information, please refer to our guide here: Export formats and settings

If the above information doesn’t help, feel free to reach out directly to our support team for further assistance: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
When contacting our support team, the following information would be helpful:

• Your Figma account email address.
• The URL of the Figma file. Please add support-share@figma.com as an editor on this file so we can take a closer look and test the export.
• The exported PDF file.
• A detailed description or screen recording of the steps you took to export this file. Please include a screenshot of the export settings used and a screenshot of the specific object(s) you are exporting.

We hope this provides some guidance! If there’s anything else we’ve missed, please let us know. Also, we’re more than happy to wait for more suggestions from our amazing community!

Thanks,

@Junko3 Thank you for your response, unfortunately this new compression really, really hurts some exports, they become full of artifacts.

Isn’t there a way to select compressed/uncompressed when exporting? I understand people complain about PDFs being “too large” but forcing compression doesn’t seem like a good idea.

I imagine many people like me, use Figma to export PDFs to clients, showing artworks, text, descriptions… I even imagine some people use Figma to make small magazines and folders, elements that can benefit from both vector text and lossless png images.

Where could I go to suggest this change to be optional?

Hey @Shiva_Souza, Thanks for sharing your thoughts about PDF export, I completely understand where you’re coming from.

At the moment, it appears that there isn’t an option to choose between compressed/uncompressed when exporting PDF.

But rest assured, your feedback is important to us. I can shift this conversation over to the “Share an Idea” section. That way, others who share your interest can vote and express their support.

If you’re okay with this, please let us know! Also, you’re more than welcome to create a new post in the “Share an Idea” section anytime.

We use these votes to understand what’s most important to our community, which in turn helps us prioritize our efforts.

Thanks,

Hi @Junko3 Please let users decide if they want compressed or uncompressed DPF export (or even add a slider to set compression rate). Having hight quality PDF export from Figma is crucial for me, and for many other users. Today I was really shocked when I updated one of my documents created a few months ago, and exported it to PDF. JPEG artifacts all over the place - it looks blurry, ugly, and low quality. Comparing the PDF exported before this update and the one exported today side by side really hurts my eyes. Please let users choose if you implement features that cause decrease in output quality.

Hi there, Thank you for your feedback! I’ve switched the topic category to “Share an Idea” to ensure it gets the attention it deserves.

Please consider giving it a vote up!

Thank you, I gave my vote.

I gave my vote as well.

Exporting lossless PDFs is crucial for me, too!!!

It is a very powerful feature combined with LaTex for technical paper writing, as LaTex does not support loading SVG. I hope it back as soon as possible.

Return png-quality image for .pdf export. Now i need to export images as png and make pdf in acrobat reader. This is ridiculous!

So, unfortunatelly you guys didn’t fix it? We still can’t switch between normal and comressed PDFs? If so — this is really unconvinient. Please do it somehow, because this option doesn’t look hard to be made, but this feature would make Figma much better

I faced the same Issue, All our rasterized images looks pretty ugly and text isn’t that impressive on Png either using commercial printers. Recently, we moved to Figma Boards for ease of use and started to rely heavily on it to develop complex mind maps and infrastructure plans. To me and my team Figma was more convenient to be able to work on the go using smaller machines and tablets were crucial to us: thanks to Figma small footprint.
Thanks for the awesome app you brought to the world. Please consider the uncompressed images option for pdf exports very soon.