Mastering Image Cropping in Figma: A Comprehensive Guide
When it comes to creating professional-quality designs in Figma, having high-quality images is essential. However, sometimes you’ll find an image that’s not the right size or shape for your needs. The good news is that you don’t need to leave Figma to crop your images. With Figma’s built-in cropping tools, you can perform simple and complex crops, all within the platform.
Accessing the Crop Option in Figma
You can access the Crop option in Figma in three ways:
- Click the Crop button in the toolbar: Ensure you have selected the layer containing the image you want to crop, then click the Crop button in the toolbar. Adjust the crop boundaries by dragging the crop handles, and apply the crop by clicking on the canvas, pressing Escape, or pressing Enter or Return.
- Access the Crop option under the Fill menu: Double-click the image to open the image properties panel, set the fill mode of the image to Crop, and adjust the crop boundaries by dragging the crop handles. Apply the crop by clicking on the canvas, pressing Escape, or pressing Enter or Return.
- Use keyboard shortcuts: Hold the option key, double-click on the image, and click the Crop button in the toolbar. Adjust and apply the crop as needed.
Tips for Cropping Images in Figma
Regardless of whether you’re on a Mac or Windows device, or using Figma’s new UI or previous UI, here are some useful tips to make your image cropping experience smoother:
- Maintain aspect ratio: Hold Command for Mac or Control for Windows.
- Crop opposite sides of an image: Hold Option for Mac or Alt for Windows.
- Rotate the image: Hover over the corner of the crop boundary. When the rotate cursor appears, click and drag it.
Basic Cropping in Figma
Before diving into advanced techniques, let’s cover the basics of cropping an image in Figma. To start, you can use the Unsplash plugin to generate a random, high-quality, open-source image of a person.
Cropping a Square Shape
To crop a square shape, you can open the image details from the Fill section of the Design panel and select Crop from the dropdown menu. This will expose the eight cropping handles that you can click and drag as desired. Alternatively, you can start from the original image on your canvas and hold down Ctrl while dragging any corner of the image to quickly crop while you drag.
Cropping a Circle Shape
To crop a circle shape, you can set a corner radius that’s at least half the height of the image, or drag the corner radius handles from the image until it becomes a circle.
Shape Cropping in Figma
Sometimes you won’t start with the image first. What if you already have a handful of assets in Figma and you need to make your images fit into those assets? That’s where shape cropping can help.
Simple Shape Cropping Example
To demonstrate shape cropping, let’s make a duplicate of our original image and place it on top of a placeholder ellipse on a profile card. Using Ctrl while clicking to select multiple layers, select both the ellipse layer and the image layer. Then, at the top of the screen, select Use as mask. This immediately creates a group containing both original layers.
Complex Shape Cropping Example
To crop a complex shape, you can use the pen tool to trace the outline of your foreground subject. Because this is such a complex shape, the edge detail of the final crop will depend on how many points you choose to add to this shape. Once you’ve finished tracing your foreground subject, make sure it is a closed loop. Masking will not work properly without an enclosed shape. Then, select both the vector layer and the image, and at the top of the screen, select Use as mask.
With Figma’s powerful cropping tools, you can achieve professional-quality designs without relying on third-party software. By mastering cropping and masking in Figma, you can focus on delivering visually appealing interfaces that meet your design goals.