Nice to see stunning gradients made from scratch. The Figma file is now available for download.

My working file got really sluggish recently, and this plugin had the biggest impact on improving performance. The Downsize plugin by Alex Einarsson scans the document for images, then converts them to JPG, resizes, and compresses. It took a while to run on a large file, but memory utilization decreased by ~10%, and the file became noticeably faster to navigate.

It is worth noting that multiple tweets about poor Figma performance (see Oğuz and T. Costa) popped onto my timeline last week. Based on Figma’s replies, they’re looking into it, so a dozen large images might not be the only source of my problem.

A tutorial from James on creating beautiful background patterns and effects. I haven’t tried the vga blurrific.exe plugin he recommends, but it looks really cool.

Justin Jay Wang experimented with different methods for generating random gradient images, including those used by OpenAI visual identity. He explains the difference between heightmaps, layered radials, and AI-generated gradients. Loved this part: ​“In early 2019, OpenAI’s home page displayed a vibrant, full-screen gradient. The implementation was simple: a tiny, 2×3 pixel image of six color stops, which produced a smooth gradient when scaled up by web browsers. It weighed just 85 bytes (about the size of a brief text snippet) and loaded virtually instantly.”

A collection of attractive geometric backgrounds, ​“generated by Human with AI”. Available for free for personal, studio, and commercial use.

Color variables can now be bound to gradient stops and saved as a style.

Free plugin for generating linear, radial, and conic gradients interpolated in a variety of color spaces, yielding richer, more brilliant gradients. Live updating so you can easily view and tweak the results.

36 free hand-crafted textures that can be tiled and recolored. Made by Mark Bennett, who crafts beautiful skeuomorphic interfaces and sells elaborate Figma projects at his community page.

“We’ve expanded our EU file hosting capabilities to support localization of videos and images in addition to previously supported assets. For Figma Enterprise accounts that are configured for EU file hosting, this upgrade will be applied to your account automatically with no action required on your part.”

Creating beautiful gradients in Figma just got easier! New controls for flipping and rotating gradients (see why they’re separate controls), displaying the gradient stop position in percentage (another yay from me!), and even better-looking defaults (although they’re bringing back the old behavior if you add a gradient on top of another fill).

Miggi celebrates his 3rd anniversary at Figma (congratulations!) by demonstrating how to make a color wheel. (A coincidence, but just earlier this week I was making the same color wheel with a very similar technique!)

Vijay Verma made a new plugin for adding a color gradient map effect to your graphics. As expected, it comes with cool predefined gradients created by him to get you started.

Rad product and home page! ​“ShaderGradient is a design tool to create beautiful moving gradients. Make stunning visuals by adding natural movements and effects to the gradient. It’s available on your favorite tools, like Framer, Figma, and React.”

New plugin for working with perceptual color and OKLCH color space! This initial release allows inspecting and manipulating color stops in gradients using the OKLCH color space — pretty useful if you have an existing gradient that needs a little tweaking. Bonus point for providing precise control over color stop positions!

A few good tips on adjusting the color hue, opacity, and evenly distributing color handles.

Fons Mans shows how to create a dreamy multi-color gradient with Figma without relying on any plugins.

Oğuz Yağız Kara shows how setting the color of the transparent gradient stop helps make it softer.

What, an old-school plugin without AI? 🤯 ​“Dithercore creates cool dithered images reminiscent of ​’80s and ​’90s computer graphics. It brings back the primitive technology of early PCs by utilizing pixel patterns and color schemes from that era.“

Effortlessly remove backgrounds or isolate objects using AI.

In this Study Hall, Miggi covers several ways to add/​edit images in Figma and demonstrates how to upload a video to use when prototyping or presenting.