Figma releases “Slides”

This week’s new tools, tutorials, and resources 👇️

• Workflow: A feedback and collaborative tool for designers, photographers, and video editors.*

• Raptive: Earn more by pairing your content with premium ads, effortlessly boosting your income.*

• Topaz Labs: Upscale your photos up to 8× directly in your web browser (20 free credits).

• Vecto3d: Transform your SVG files into 3D models, in seconds (Free tool).

• Builder.io: Convert designs to clean, responsive code in one click (Free Figma plugin).

• OH NO! MY MENU!: A free, interactive game to learn video effects in Adobe After Effects.

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TOP STORY
🥳 Figma releases “Slides”

This week, Figma announced that “Slides” has officially exited its beta phase after initially debuting at the Figma “Config” event in June 2024.

Figma Slides is a presentation tool aimed at competing with legacy design tools like Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides and is specifically tailored for designers and cross-functional teams.

Here are all the features available with Figma Slides (and what just released) 👇️ 

• Interactive prototypes

• Custom fonts

• Multi-edit

• Auto-layout

• Design libraries

• Components (NEW)

• Template styles

• Plugins

• Video embeds

• Video controls (NEW)

• Design mode

• Animations (NEW)

• Custom templates

• Multiplayer

• Grid view

• Polls, voting, alignment scales

• Spotlight

• .pptx import and export (NEW)

• Export to PDF

• Presenter notes

• AI tools

• Slide numbers (NEW)

The release aligns with Figma’s broader strategy to integrate its tools across all paid plans, as announced in December 2024, with pricing and billing changes rolling out earlier in March 2025.

This move ensures that Slides, alongside FigJam, is now accessible to all Full, Dev, or Collab seat holders at no additional cost, positioning Figma to compete more directly with established design tools like Canva and Adobe Creative Cloud.

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
📸 X Releases “Edit Photos” and acquires “Hotshot”

This week, X (formerly known as Twitter) rolled out a new "Edit Image" feature in Grok, its AI chatbot tool.

This feature allows users to upload any image and make adjustments to them by simply describing the changes they want to make.

This is similar to what Google released last week with Google Gemini 2.0 Flash Experimental.

Grok is available through X, its standalone web app, and mobile app on iOS and Android.

In addition this this, xAI (the company behind Grok), acquired Hotshot, a San Francisco-based startup specializing in AI video generation.

Hotshot was established in 2023 and has developed three video models (Hotshot-XL, Hotshot Act One, and Hotshot) that allow users to create short videos from text prompts.

This acquisition, xAI’s first known purchase, aims to bolster its AI offerings, potentially integrating video generation into platforms like the X app.

Hotshot’s technology, trained on 600 million video clips, targets applications in education, entertainment, and productivity, positioning xAI to compete with rivals like OpenAI’s “Sora” and Google’s “Veo 2.”

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DESIGN
👀 Dribbble changes payment policy; Contra steps up

This week, Dribbble—one of the largest platforms for designers to showcase their work and connect with clients—rolled out a controversial payment policy update.

“Today, we’re instituting a new policy that requires clients and designers who meet on Dribbble to keep payments on Dribbble.”

• “Clients and designers may not request contact details from each other, or display or share their own contact details, with regards to a work opportunity, until the client has made payment through the platform.”

• Now, Dribbble is applying a platform fee of “2-5% to the client’s payment (depending on transaction size) and 0-3.5% to the designer’s payout (depending on whether or not they subscribe to Pro).”

This policy has sparked considerable controversy in the design community, where designers have voiced frustration over the loss of autonomy.

Critics see it as a move to prioritize platform fees—such as the 7.5% client fee and 2.9% + $0.30 processing fee—over designer flexibility, despite the perk of 0% transaction fees for Pro subscribers.

The backlash has been swift, with some designers canceling subscriptions and calling it "the end of a Dribbble era."

Following Dribbble's policy change, Contra (a startup that launched in early 2020) quickly positioned itself as the freelancer-friendly alternative.

Contra seized this opportunity by highlighting its commission-free model.

They even went as far as creating a Dribbble importer that would allow new users to import their work and create a Contra profile in a matter of minutes 👇️ 

📰 Other news you might’ve missed:

• Adobe Photoshop (Beta) has dramatically improved the “Remove Background” feature.

• OpenAI’s “Sora” model now comes with unlimited video generations on paid ChatGPT plans.

• Blender has released Blender 4.4, which includes an improved animation workflow, better modeling, a new sculpt brush, smoother video editing, and over 700 issues fixed.

• Descript “Rooms” is out of beta — the feature allows users to record videos in high-definition audio and 4K video.

• Framer has made the Framer CMS mobile-friendly, allowing you to check your live site, edit content, and publish, all on your phone.

• Play now allows users to export styles, components, pages, and their entire apps to Xcode.

• Framer now allows users to see all their colors at once when they’re selecting multiple layers.

• Descript added the “Kens Burns” effect, allowing users to bring photos to life.

• LottieFiles has released an Adobe After Effects certification, hosted by Jess Libby.

• Recraft has adjusted its pricing for the Recraft API.

• DaVinci Resolve released version 19.1.4, which adds support for Blackmagic RAW files shot on Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65, as well as support for Apple ProRes encoding on Windows and Linux systems.

• Pika released a sneak peek for a new feature that will allow users to manipulate a character or object in their video while keeping the rest perfectly intact.

• Jitter now allows users to copy their easings as CSS.

• Captions now allow users to add cinematic video overlays or dynamic B-rolls to talking videos with Pika.

• KREA AI released “Video Training,” allowing users to train an AI model with their own videos and have it learn custom styles, motions, or objects.

• Gamma has added Jotform support, allowing users to embed interactive surveys and forms directly in their presentations.

• Freepik now supports “Kling 1.6 Elements,” allowing users to drop reference images and see them flawlessly integrated into AI videos.

• Topaz Labs announced “Gigapixel v8.3.0,” with the world’s fastest diffusion model for high-res image restoration, Recover v2.”

• Rive Flutter now supports the Rive Renderer across Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and the web.

• Framer has added “Code Boundaries,” a bullet-proof wrapper around every piece of code within Framer.

• Riffusion now allows users to swap vocal and sound stems.

• Udio released “v1.5 Allegro,” a new model that can produce better quality songs, faster.

• Pikzels released Pikzels 2.4.

• Luma AI’s “Ray 2 Flash” is now available in its API.