AI image editing in Figma

I was reviewing a student's homework and the avatars were pixelated and blurry. You know how it goes... Someone sends you low-res images and you still need to ship something that looks good.

You could jump to another tool, but Figma has AI image editing built right in. Command+Return on any image, type "edit image", and you've got a prompt bar.

Here's the thing nobody tells you. If you're working with a cropped image, you need to rasterize it first. Otherwise the AI sees your entire screenshot behind the crop, not just the avatar you're trying to fix. Command+Option+G to frame it, Command+\ for the action bar, type "rasterize selection". Now the AI only sees what you want it to see.

I started with "Upscale detail by 4x. Keep the subject unchanged and sharp. Expand the existing background seamlessly outward for more cropping space. Do not change the environment or add new objects."

First image looked pretty solid. Move to the next.

Second image had good detail but didn't zoom out enough. So I just sent "zoom out by 3X" as a follow-up. That worked, but now there's random letters in the background. "HB" for some reason. Had to prompt again. "Remove letters from background". Fixed.

Third image, same wavy crop artifact. Instead of fixing it after every time, I just added "remove wavy white crop" to my base prompt. Now it handles that automatically.

Then I hit a wall. One image just wouldn't zoom out. I kept typing "zoom out by 3X" and it would produce the same result over and over. Maybe because there's not much background. But it definitely didn't zoom out by 3X.

And I had that thought. "This is ridiculous. Probably faster to just get a better photo."

But I tried one more thing. "Zoom out by 5X" instead.

There we go, perfect.

The real skill here isn't knowing how to prompt perfectly. It's knowing when to keep iterating versus when to just do it manually. I wanted one head centered in the frame. Tried "pan subject so face is centered in image". Didn't work. Tried again. Same thing. After two attempts, I just repositioned it manually. Took 30 seconds.

But I had one with a smooth gradient background that just would not cooperate. I went from "smooth out background" to "make background smooth and seamless" to "no frame within a frame" to "make sure the entire background is smooth like a photographer's studio paper roll backdrop".

Like, it's trying. It's trying. It's really trying.

Sometimes you need to get that specific. And when that doesn't work, you scrap it and start fresh. "Remove background completely. Replace with an empty photographer's studio."

I ended up with six high-quality avatars in no time. All inside Figma. No context switching, no external tools, no export and reimport workflow.

Most designers don't even know this feature exists. And the ones who do haven't figured out the rasterization technique or the prompt iteration pattern. But now you know both.

You don't have to settle for low quality assets when you can prompt your way to better ones.

Command+Return on any image. Type "edit image". Start experimenting.