Exporting Layers to Photoshop and Figma

The point of splitting an image into layers is not to live in one tool forever. You'll decompose in the browser and finish somewhere else — Photoshop for retouching, Figma for layout, Canva for the social resize, a marketplace listing that needs the product on pure white.

So the export story matters more than people give it credit for when they're comparing tools.

What export gives you

Two paths, both in the editor:

Individual layers as transparent PNGs. Select any layer, download it. What you get is that element on transparency, at the selected layer’s current export dimensions — a clean asset ready to drop into anything. This is the one that matters for cross-tool work.

The full composite as PNG. Every visible layer rendered together, exactly as you see them on the canvas — positions, stacking, rotation and opacity applied. Use it when the image is finished and you just need the result.

One detail worth knowing: composite export runs locally in your browser. It doesn't consume credits. Decomposition is the paid step; getting your result out is not, at any resolution the editor supports.

The Photoshop round-trip

Photoshop opens transparent PNGs natively, so the workflow is short: download each layer you need, then place each PNG into your Photoshop document. Rebuild the stacking order and positions using the source image as a reference. Separate PNG files do not carry the Studio layer order or coordinates with them. Studio currently does not export a layered PSD.

Where this earns its keep is precision work. Decomposition gives you an initial layer structure; Photoshop gives you pixel-level control over the seams. The combination is stronger than either alone: you can reduce some of the manual masking needed to create those layers, and keep the tools you'd have used to refine them anyway.

One habit: export every layer you might touch, not just the obvious ones. The background you didn't plan to edit is the one you'll want when the client asks for "just a small change" to it, and re-running decomposition to recover it costs credits the original run didn't.

The Figma / Canva direction

Same asset, different job. A separated subject layer dropped into Figma can be placed into a frame and reused as an image — reusable across frames with the layout rebuilt around it. In Canva, layers slot into templates for the social-size variants that every campaign eventually needs.

The pattern to internalize: decomposition output is generic material. Any tool that accepts a PNG accepts your layers, which means the browser editor is a front door, not a destination.

What doesn't survive the trip

Be aware of what a PNG layer can't carry: no editable text, no adjustment layers, no effects stacks. A text layer exports as rasterized type — fine for composition, not for re-typesetting. If you need the wording changed, change it in the editor where the text is still an addressable layer, then export.

That's the practical division of labor: semantic edits where the structure lives, pixel edits where the precision lives. The PNG in between is the handshake.