Move vectors, live text and images between Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects — any of them to any other.
Everything you would buy Overlord for, with nothing to pay, today or later.
Select something. Press Send. It arrives in the other app as real artwork — editable paths, live text, proper layers — not a flattened screenshot.
Download · How to use it · What travels · The manual · Trouble?
Stuck somewhere? Email me at lettertosohan@gmail.com with the details, and I will sort it out.
Getting artwork out of one app and into another usually means exporting SVGs, re-importing, watching gradients flatten, retyping text that arrived as a picture, and doing it again every time the design changes.
LazyLord skips all of that. It reads what you selected, describes it in a form every app understands, and rebuilds it natively on the other side. Send again after a change and it can update what it built before, where it stands — your position, your grouping, your edits kept.
It is free, open source, and works entirely on your own computer. Nothing is uploaded, no account is needed, and it keeps working offline.
LazyLord is an independent, free replacement for Battle Axe's Overlord. It is not affiliated with Adobe, Figma, or Battle Axe.
| Real artwork | Bézier paths stay paths, text stays editable text, images stay images |
| Both directions | All four apps send and receive — twelve routes in all |
| Update in place | Send again and it replaces what it made before, where it sits |
| Notices your edits | Changed that layer by hand? It says so, and On conflict decides whether to keep it |
| Live | Keep one app updating as you work in another |
| Honest | Anything an app cannot rebuild is listed, not silently dropped |
| Private | Everything runs on your machine, over your own loopback |
| Operating system | Windows 10 or 11, or macOS |
| Adobe apps | Photoshop, Illustrator or After Effects — 2021 or newer. Any one of them is enough |
| Figma | Optional. The desktop app, or Chrome, Edge or Firefox once the plugin comes from Figma Community (not Safari) |
| Anything else | No. No Node.js, no extension manager, no account, no subscription |
-
Download
LazyLord-1.1.11.zipfrom the releases page. -
Unzip it — right-click → Extract All on Windows, double-click on macOS. Do not run anything from inside the zip itself.
-
Close Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects.
-
Run
1 - Install LazyLord.bat(macOS:1 - Install LazyLord (macOS).command— if macOS refuses to open it, right-click it and choose Open). -
Start an Adobe app and open the panel:
Photoshop Window → Extensions (legacy) → LazyLord Illustrator Window → Extensions → LazyLord After Effects Window → Extensions → LazyLord
That is the whole install. The dot in the panel turns green when it is ready.
Keep one LazyLord panel open while you work. There is no separate program to start and no console window to leave running — the first panel you open quietly does that job for the others, and for Figma.
Figma does not let any installer add a plugin, so the last three clicks are
yours. 2 - Add the Figma plugin.bat (macOS: the matching .command) does
everything up to them: it copies the plugin somewhere permanent and puts the one
path you need on the clipboard. Then:
- Open the Figma desktop app — Figma only imports plugins there. (Installed from Figma Community instead, LazyLord runs in the browser too.)
- Menu → Plugins → Development → Import plugin from manifest…
- In the file window, paste the copied path (Ctrl+V, or Cmd+Shift+G then Cmd+V on macOS) and press Enter.
- Run it from Plugins → Development → LazyLord.
Figma asks whether the plugin may talk to ws://localhost:7878. That address is
the LazyLord panel on your own machine. Nothing goes anywhere else.
Everything below is the tour. Everything in detail is in docs/: the manual (every control and option), what transfers (what travels on each of the twelve routes) and troubleshooting.
The panel tells you when a new LazyLord is out: a card at the top says what changed and has a Download button. It does so at most once every two weeks, however often new versions come out, and always for the newest one. Click the version number beside the logo any time to check for yourself.
Download the new zip, close the Adobe apps and run 1 - Install LazyLord again.
It replaces the old panel. If you added the Figma plugin from the download, run
2 - Add the Figma plugin again too.
Run Uninstall LazyLord.bat from the download (macOS: delete
~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/com.lazylord.panel).
In Figma: Plugins → Development → Manage plugins in development → remove.
 |
 |
| After Effects | Photoshop |
The same panel in two apps, each seeing the other. Whichever app you are in, the other one appears under Send to and the button names it.
Every app both sends and receives, so all twelve directions work:
| sends ↓ / receives → | Figma | Illustrator | After Effects | Photoshop |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Figma | — | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Illustrator | ✅ | — | ✅ | ✅ |
| After Effects | ✅ | ✅ | — | ✅ |
| Photoshop | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | — |
What each app can describe still differs — After Effects has no background blur, Illustrator has no timeline and no inner shadow, Photoshop rebuilds shadows and blurs but not the glows and overlays it can read — and every one of those gaps is reported on the transfer rather than left to be discovered. The tables under What transfers say which.
- A LazyLord panel open in your Adobe app, its dot green. (That panel is the bridge; nothing else has to be running.)
- In Figma, select layers, open LazyLord, choose a target (or All apps), pick an Image scale (1x–4x, default 2x), press Send.
- Watch the layers appear natively in the Adobe document. ✨
If everything you selected sits inside one top-level frame, it lands where it sits in that frame, and a new document or comp is created at the frame's size.
Send a layer as a picture. Tick Send the selected layers as images under Image scale and each selected layer — a busy illustration, a group with effects Adobe apps do not have — goes as one image, exactly as it looks, instead of editable layers. The choice is saved in the Figma file, so it holds for every later send; untick it to send those layers as layers again.
Every panel has a Send selection card. It lists every other app that is connected, and the button says where the transfer is going — Send to After Effects, Send to Figma, and so on.
Sending to Figma asks first. Nothing another app sends goes onto a Figma canvas by itself: the LazyLord plugin shows it under Incoming — which app, how many layers, whether it adds or updates — and it is placed only when you press Place on canvas (or Update on canvas). Decline tells the sending app nothing was placed. Keep the plugin open in Figma while you send. With Live, changes from the Adobe app gather on one card that always holds the newest state; press Update on canvas whenever you want Figma to catch up.
Earlier versions labelled these Push and Pull, following Overlord. Those words name a direction through a workflow rather than what the button does — After Effects' button said "Pull" while sending artwork out — and they stop meaning anything once every app talks to every other one. The button now simply names its destination.
The panel has the same Destination and Image scale choices the Figma plugin does, so a transfer out of Illustrator can make a new comp the size of the artboard exactly as one out of Figma can:
| Destination | What the receiving app does |
|---|---|
| Open document (default) | Into the document or comp already open, where it sits on the page |
| New — source page size | A new document or comp the size of the source artboard / composition / canvas, with everything where it sits on it |
| New — selection size | A new document or comp the size of the selection, with the artwork at its origin |
Both the Figma plugin and the Adobe panel have a folded Options section. The sender chooses; the receiving app obeys (they travel as document.options). Choices are remembered per app.
The Figma plugin also has a Destination choice, shown above Options:
| Destination | What the receiving app does |
|---|---|
| New document — frame or object size (default) | A new Photoshop / Illustrator document or After Effects comp. A whole frame or section gets one its size and name; objects get one their own size and name. |
| New document — top-level frame size | A new document the size of the top-level frame the selection sits in, with everything where it sits in that frame. |
| Open document | Into the document or comp already open, where it sits in its frame (a new one only when nothing is open). |
With either New document choice, selecting several whole frames or sections sends each one separately: every frame gets its own document or comp, at its size and under its name. A frame sent whole is always the page, even without a fill, so its contents keep their place in it.
Transfers pushed from Illustrator or pulled from After Effects always go into the open document or comp, as before.
| Option | Choice | What the receiving app builds |
|---|---|---|
| Layout | Split (default) | One layer per shape |
| Combine | After Effects: every eligible shape in one shape layer, one vector group each. Text, images, layers needing a track matte, shapes with a different clip — and gradient-filled shapes when a Gradient Ramp is used, since it colours a whole layer — stay separate layers (reported). Illustrator and Photoshop ignore it. | |
| Hierarchy | Flatten (default) | Groups dissolve into their layers; a group's opacity is multiplied into its layers (reported when they could overlap) |
| Groups | Illustrator groups, Photoshop layer groups, After Effects parent nulls — or nested shape groups when combining | |
| Precomps | After Effects: each frame becomes a precomp its size. A component and all its instances share one precomp; each copy's own text and colours are set in its Essential Properties | |
| Existing | Add (default) | Every transfer creates new layers |
| Update | A layer an earlier transfer built from the same object is edited where it stands, instead of a duplicate being added | |
| Keyframes | Auto (default) | While updating: a property that is already animated gets a new key at the playhead; a still one is just set |
| Always | Every property LazyLord updates is keyed at the playhead — how you animate a shape by re-sending it | |
| On conflict | Overwrite (default) | While updating: a layer that was edited in the receiving app since it was last sent is updated anyway, and reported |
| Keep my edits | That layer is left as it was edited, and reported | |
| Only what changed | on (default) | While updating: only the layers whose source changed since the last successful send to that app go out; nothing at all when nothing changed |
| Layers as frames | Photoshop only, off by default | The selected layers — or the layers in one selected group, bottom first — become the frames of one image sequence in After Effects, all the same size. Hidden layers count, so a frame animation sends as it is |
Split + Flatten + Add is what earlier versions produced, with two intentional fixes (see docs/history.md).
Each layer a transfer builds records where it came from — the source app, the source document and the object's own id — in the one writable text field its host gives every layer (an After Effects layer comment, an Illustrator note). The tag is a single bracketed token, so anything else you keep in that field survives:
my own note
[[LazyLord figma|0:1|1:42]]
With Existing: Update, the receiving app reads those tags back and edits the matching layer instead of adding one. What that changes:
| After Effects | Illustrator | |
|---|---|---|
| What is rewritten | The transform, the outline and the paint — found by searching the layer's contents, not assumed to still be where they were left | The artwork is rebuilt and dropped into the stacking position the old item held; the old item is removed |
| What survives | Its place in the stack, its parent, its effects, its masks, and any property LazyLord does not own | Its place in the stack and the layer or group it was in |
| What does not | — | Anything added to the item itself, such as an Illustrator appearance |
| Keyframes | Animated properties take a key at the playhead rather than a static value, which is what makes re-sending an edited shape animate it | No timeline, so none |
Photoshop and Figma update the way Illustrator does: the new version is drawn where the old one stood — same layer group or frame, same place in the stack — and the old one is removed. Their tags live where the user never sees them: in each Photoshop layer's XMP metadata (saved in the PSD; not the Background layer), and in each Figma node's plugin data (saved in the file). Both keep a fingerprint too, so a layer edited there since the last send is a conflict, as in After Effects and Illustrator. In Figma, a node moved into another frame or group is updated where it now is; only the current page is searched.
Notes worth knowing:
- The first transfer always adds — there are no tags to match yet. Send once, then switch to Update.
- Update ignores Layout and Hierarchy (reported). Editing layers where they stand cannot also restructure them; send with Add to change the layout.
- Update needs somewhere to update, so it always builds into the open document or comp — in the Figma plugin it overrides Destination, and says so.
- A layer id only matches within its own document. Node ids, Illustrator
uuids and After Effects layer ids all repeat across files, so the document key is part of the tag. An unsaved source has no stable key; its tags match only other keyless ones. - Nothing is ever deleted in After Effects. If a shape no longer holds what the source describes — you added a contour, or deleted a group — the contours that pair up are updated and the mismatch is reported.
- Deleting the tag from a layer's comment or note detaches it: the next Update adds a fresh layer instead.
- Smart diff. Every leaf sent is fingerprinted from its IR. After a successful send the fingerprints are kept per destination app and source document (the Adobe panels in their local storage, the Figma plugin while it is open), and an update leaves out every leaf whose fingerprint has not changed. The paths of images LazyLord generated are not part of it, since they change on every read. An update never deletes, so after deleting a layer in the destination, untick Only what changed once to send everything again.
- Conflicts. When a build or an update finishes, After Effects and Illustrator add a fingerprint of what LazyLord wrote to the tag —
[[LazyLord figma|0:1|1:42~k3f9.2a]]— and the next update compares it with the layer as it is now. After Effects reads the transform, outline, paint, text and footage (an animated property by its keys, a still one by its value before expressions, so neither the playhead nor an expression counts as an edit); Illustrator the geometry, points, paint, text and linked file of the items made from one layer. On conflict decides what happens to a layer that differs. Tags written before fingerprints never conflict and gain one on their next update. - Live needs one destination: any single app — After Effects, Illustrator, Photoshop or Figma — but not "All apps", whose apps can each hold something different. Into Figma, Live changes wait: they collect on one card in the plugin, always the newest state, and reach the canvas when you press Update on canvas. Live from Figma to an Adobe app updates the Adobe app by itself, as before.
- Live. Tick Live — send changes as you work under the Send button. In Figma, the objects selected at that moment are watched (the page's
nodechangeevent, debounced by 600 ms) and exported again when anything inside them changes. In the Adobe panels, a cheap stamp of the selection (LazyLord.liveStamp: AE's selected layers and their fingerprints, Illustrator's selected items, Photoshop's history state and selected layers) is polled every 1.5 s. Each change goes as an update of only what changed, into the open document; a change made while a send is under way waits for it. Live sends are logged but kept out of the history. It stops by itself when what it watches is gone, or the bridge or destination disconnects.
After every transfer the panel prints a one-line summary (layers, images — originals vs. generated — and fallbacks by kind), and lists anything that needed a fallback, naming the object and the reason, sorted skipped → rasterized → approximated.
- The Figma plugin has a grip in its bottom-right corner. A plugin window is only ever the size the plugin asks for — there is no window chrome to drag — so the grip is the chrome: drag it and the window resizes. The size is remembered and restored next time you open it.
- The Adobe panel resizes the way every Adobe panel does, by dragging its edge. Dock it, float it, make it tall and narrow beside your artboard — it reflows rather than overflowing, so the rows of buttons go from one column to as many as fit.
| Content | After Effects | Illustrator | Photoshop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vector shapes (bezier) | Shape layer | Path / compound path | Editable shape layer (raster fill as fallback) |
| Rectangle / ellipse | Live Rect / Ellipse shape | Path | Shape layer |
| Solid fill & stroke | ✅ (weight/cap/join) | ✅ | ✅ stroke on the shape layer where possible |
| Linear / radial gradient | Real shape gradient, every stop (Gradient Ramp if that fails) | Native gradient, direction and length | Gradient fill layer |
| Clipping frames & masks | Layer masks | Clipping group | Layer group with a vector mask |
| Frames & groups | Parent nulls / shape groups (Groups), precomps (Precomps) | Groups (Groups) | Layer groups (Groups) |
| Components & instances | One shared precomp (Precomps): texts, and colours that differ, are Essential Graphics properties | Groups | Layer groups |
| Layers ticked Send the selected layers as images | Footage | Placed image | Smart object |
| Frame backgrounds | Shape layer | Path | Shape layer |
| Live, editable text | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Font family + style | best-effort | best-effort | best-effort |
| Kerning switched off | ✅ (24.0+) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Images / rasters | Footage | Placed image, embedded | Smart object |
| Rotation | ✅ about the centre | ✅ | ✅ |
| Opacity, position & size | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Figma rotation used to pivot on the layer's top-left; vectors now have their transform baked into the geometry, and text and images turn about their centre on every host. Diagonal linear gradients keep the angle Figma shows, on non-square and rotated shapes too.
| Illustrator object | Becomes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
PathItem |
AE shape layer | Full bezier fidelity; rectangles and ellipses become live Rect / Ellipse shapes |
CompoundPathItem |
One shape layer, even-odd | Holes are preserved |
GroupItem |
Parent null (Groups) or flattened | Group opacity carried |
| Clipping group | Layer masks on its contents | Nested masks keep the innermost (reported) |
TextFrame (point text) |
Editable AE text | On its real baseline, rotation carried |
TextFrame (area text) |
Editable AE text | Rebuilt as point text; the box is not carried over |
PlacedItem (linked) |
AE footage | Uses your original file — never re-encoded; rotation carried |
RasterItem (embedded) |
AE footage | Exported to @2x PNG |
| Mesh, symbol, live effect | AE footage | Rasterised via a scratch document, and reported |
| Linear / radial gradient | Gradient Ramp | Real gradient vector, including later transforms |
| RGB / CMYK / Gray / Spot | AE colour | CMYK converted through Illustrator's own engine |
| AE layer | Becomes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Shape layer, drawn path | Illustrator path | Full bezier fidelity, tight bounds |
| Shape layer, rect / ellipse / polystar | Illustrator path | Parametric shapes are generated; polystar roundness is dropped and reported |
| Shape layer with several painted groups | A group of paths | Each group keeps its own fill/stroke; group opacity carried |
| Fill / stroke | Solid colour, width, cap, join, fill rule | Stroke width scales with the baked transform |
| Gradient Ramp effect | Gradient fill | So LazyLord's own AE gradients round-trip |
| Layer masks (Add) | Clipping group | Other mask modes, feather and inverted masks are reported |
| Text layer | Live Illustrator text | On its real baseline, rotation carried |
| Footage layer | Placed image | Uses your original file; rotation carried |
| Solid layer | Filled rectangle | A solid is just a coloured rect |
| Parented layers | Placed correctly | The whole parent chain is composed |
| Selected parent null | Group | Its selected children go inside |
| Track matte | — | Reported, not transferred |
| Camera, light, precomp, null | — | Skipped and reported |
| Photoshop | After Effects | Figma |
|---|---|---|
| Clipping mask | Alpha track matte on the base layer | Mask group |
| Layer mask | Luma track matte from the mask | Luminance mask |
| Gradient fill layer | Real shape gradient, every stop | Native gradient |
| Layer style: drop / inner shadow, outer / inner glow, stroke, colour overlay | The same After Effects layer styles — on shape, text, pixel and smart object layers alike | Shadows, glows, stroke and overlay where Figma has them (a pixel layer's style stays in its image) |
| Layer style: gradient overlay, satin, bevel & emboss | Layer styles | Reported |
| Adjustment layer: Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Hue/Saturation, Exposure, Vibrance, Invert, Threshold, Posterize, Black & White, Photo Filter, Color Balance | Adjustment layer with the matching effect, opacity, blend mode and mask | Reported (Figma has none) |
| Adjustment layer: Curves, Gradient Map and the rest | Reported | Reported |
| Layers as frames (Options) | One image sequence: each selected layer, or each layer in a selected group, bottom first, is a frame | First frame |
| Kerning: Optical or none | ✅ (24.0+) | Reported |
Illustrator and After Effects also carry letter pairs kerned by hand both ways (After Effects 24.3 or newer); Figma folds them into letter spacing, which looks the same.
- After Effects: images LazyLord generated are copied next to your saved project in
LazyLord Assets/(never overwriting;-1,-2… appended) and imported from there. A project that has never been saved gets nothing: a transfer that brings in images stops before building and asks you to save the project first, so no footage is ever linked from a temporary folder. Shapes, text and your own linked files need no folder and go ahead. Your own linked files are never copied. - Choose the folder yourself: the After Effects panel's Images → Choose… keeps them in a folder you pick instead, saved project or not. Default goes back.
- Image sequences are copied into a folder of their own (
Walk frames/), names kept, so After Effects reads them as one sequence. - Illustrator: generated images are embedded; your own files stay linked.
A layer's blend mode and its shadows and blurs travel with it, in one shared vocabulary
(BlendMode and Effect in packages/core/src/ir.ts). What a host cannot rebuild it reports,
naming the layer and what was lost — it is never dropped quietly.
| Figma | After Effects | Illustrator | Photoshop | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blend modes (all 16) | ✅ native | ✅ native | ✅ native | ✅ native |
| Drop shadow | ✅ native | ✅ Drop Shadow effect | ✅ Drop Shadow live effect (black) | ✅ Drop Shadow layer style |
| Shadow spread | ✅ native | ✅ on a layer style (from Photoshop); reported on the Drop Shadow effect | reported | ✅ the style's Spread |
| Inner shadow | ✅ native | ✅ Inner Shadow layer style | reported | ✅ Inner Shadow layer style |
| Layer blur | ✅ native | ✅ Gaussian Blur | ✅ Gaussian Blur live effect | ✅ Gaussian Blur smart filter |
| Background blur | ✅ native | reported | reported | reported |
| Photoshop layer styles (from Photoshop) | shadows, glows, stroke, colour overlay | ✅ as layer styles | reported | — |
Worth knowing:
- After Effects describes a shadow differently. It has no x/y offset — it has a direction dial and a distance — so the IR's offset is converted into them. A drop shadow from anywhere but Photoshop becomes the stock Drop Shadow effect, which has no spread, so a shadow that uses one is rebuilt without it and says so; one from Photoshop becomes a layer style instead, which keeps its spread.
- Inner shadows, glows, strokes and overlays become After Effects layer styles, whatever app they came from — editable in the timeline under Layer Styles. A script cannot set a style's blend mode or a gradient overlay's colours, so those keep After Effects' own and are reported.
- A blur radius is not the same number everywhere. Figma's radius is a standard deviation; AE's Blurriness is roughly twice it for the same look, and is converted.
- Photoshop layer styles are read and rebuilt as After Effects layer styles, which take the same settings.
- In Illustrator, effects arrive as live effects you can edit in the Appearance panel. Its scripted drop shadow is always black (a coloured one is drawn black and reported), and it has no inner shadow or spread.
- In Photoshop, shadows arrive as layer styles. A layer blur needs a smart filter, so a blurred layer becomes a smart object: the blur stays editable, and so does the shape or text, inside it.
- A rasterised layer keeps its effects in its pixels, so its effects are deliberately not sent as well — otherwise every shadow would be drawn twice. Its blend mode still travels, because an export renders the layer, not how it composites with what is under it.
- A blend mode a host does not have leaves the layer Normal, reported.
-
All or nothing. If a build stops part-way with an error, what it had made is taken back:
- After Effects: new layers and project items are removed. They are matched by id, so the user's own are never touched.
- Illustrator: new items are removed by uuid, and a document the transfer opened is closed unsaved.
- Photoshop: the document steps back to its history state before the build, so Redo can bring it back.
Anything that cannot be identified is left alone, and the error says so. Per-layer fallbacks still give a partial build with diagnostics, as before. Layers an Update had already edited stay edited (use Undo). Figma builds are not rolled back yet.
-
Large transfers (JSON over 4 MB, usually because of images) travel in 1 MB chunks that the receiver joins back together, staying well under the bridge's 100 MB message limit.
-
Temporary files. Transfer folders in
<temp>/lazylordolder than 7 days are removed when a panel starts. Nothing depends on them by then: After Effects has its own copies beside the project, and Illustrator and Photoshop embed theirs. -
History. The Adobe panels and the Figma plugin keep the last 25 transfers sent and received: when, where to or from, what, how many layers, and any fallbacks or failure. It is kept per app, and can be cleared.
-
Presets. The Options section can save the Destination, Image scale and options under a name and bring them back in one step.
- After Effects gradients are real shape gradients with every stop. Scripts cannot set their colours directly, so LazyLord writes them through a small animation preset it makes on the fly; if After Effects refuses that, the shape falls back to a two-colour Gradient Ramp, reported.
- After Effects gradient fills you made yourself cannot be read from shape layers (LazyLord's own can); those shapes arrive unfilled, and the panel says so.
- Photoshop gradients longer than Photoshop's 150% scale limit are clamped (reported). Diagonal gradients on long, thin Figma shapes hit this.
- Font mapping relies on family/style name matching; unusual fonts may fall back to the host default.
- Mixed-style text travels as runs (font, size, colour, tracking per range) and is rebuilt as live text; After Effects needs 24.3 or newer for it (
TextDocument.characterRange), and older versions take the first run's style, reported. - Effects: blend modes travel everywhere; drop shadows and layer blurs are rebuilt in After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop; inner shadows and glows in After Effects (as layer styles), Photoshop and Figma. A background blur is Figma's alone — After Effects, Illustrator and Photoshop report it. Illustrator's own live effects are not read when sending from Illustrator, and AE path operators (Merge, Trim, Repeater…) are not transferred; both are reported.
- Components share a precomp only with Precomps. Copies that differ in size, layout, images or styled text get a precomp each ("Button 2"…). Essential Graphics needs After Effects 2019 or newer; without it, differing copies simply get their own precomp.
- Adjustment layers only rebuild in After Effects, and only the kinds in the table above; Curves, Gradient Map, Channel Mixer and the like are reported, as are Levels and Hue/Saturation set per colour channel.
- Kerning needs After Effects 24.0 (method) or 24.3 (kerned pairs). Photoshop's kerned pairs are not read, and Photoshop does not rebuild kerned pairs. Figma always uses the font's own kerning.
- Layers as frames is a one-off send: Live and Update keep layers in step, not sequences.
- Big pictures are held down. One generated image is kept under 30 megapixels (12,000 px a side) and a transfer's generated images together under 300 megapixels: a layer past that goes at a lower scale, below 1x if it must, and once the transfer's share is spent the rest are left out — reported either way, with the layer still at its full size on the page. Without this, a big old PSD sent at 2x could ask Photoshop for hundreds of megapixels per layer and stall the whole machine. Your own linked files are never resampled.
- Figma in the browser works in Chrome, Edge and Firefox once the plugin comes from Figma Community; Safari does not let a web page reach the panel.
- A clip on a group (rather than on its layers) is not rebuilt by After Effects. No source produces one today.
- Combining shapes in After Effects may pull a shape above its neighbours when only some shapes in a Figma clipping frame carry the clip (reported).
- Updating into Photoshop rests on layer XMP. Photoshop layers have no comment or note, so the tag is written to each layer's XMP metadata (through AdobeXMPScript when it loads, else as a small XMP packet of its own). A pixel edit that changes neither bounds, opacity, blend, text nor fill colour is not seen as a conflict.
- Updating does not restructure. Layout and Hierarchy are ignored while updating, and an Illustrator update replaces the item rather than editing it, so an appearance added to that item in Illustrator goes with it.
- Figma cannot read a file, so anything sent there travels as bytes rather than as a path — the panel reads the file and embeds it. A transfer that reaches Figma with only a path (from a host that could not read it) reports the image rather than dropping it silently.
- Photoshop can only read its selection through ActionManager. If that call fails, only the active layer is sent, reported. Its shape layers also need both a vector mask and a readable fill colour; without either, the layer is rasterised instead.
- Not yet implemented: sending Illustrator's own live effects out of Illustrator.
- Updating into Figma searches only the current page, and does not roll a failed build back. Every transfer into Figma waits for Place on canvas in the plugin, and Live changes into Figma wait for Update on canvas.
- Live in the Adobe panels polls. CEP gives a panel no change events, so the selection is stamped every 1.5 s. Illustrator reads at most 500 selected items and a few thousand path points per poll (bounds past that); After Effects does not treat a playhead move as a change, so values that only change by scrubbing are not re-sent.
- Version 1.0 is new. Sending, receiving, updating in place, conflict detection and Live have all been run by hand in the real apps — including the case everything rests on, where the file is saved, closed, reopened, and an update still finds the layers it made rather than adding a second copy. Over two thousand automated checks run against mocked hosts on top of that. The features new in 1.1 — real gradients, components as precomps, Photoshop masks, layer styles, adjustment layers and frame sequences, kerning, the image folder and browser Figma — pass the automated checks but have not yet been run by hand in the real apps. Adobe scripting also differs between app versions, so something can behave differently on yours: the panel's Log usually says why, and telling me is how it gets fixed. What has been reasoned out rather than exercised is listed in docs/development.md.
If anything stops you, email me: lettertosohan@gmail.com. Tell me what happened in detail and I will solve it. The more you send, the faster that goes:
- which apps and versions (for example After Effects 2025, Photoshop 2024, Windows 11);
- what you selected, what you pressed, and what you expected to happen;
- a screenshot of both apps;
- the text from the panel's Log and its list of fallbacks.
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| LazyLord is not in the Window menu | Restart the app. Adobe only looks for new panels while it starts up. |
| The panel opens blank | Run Fix a blank panel.bat from the download folder and restart the app. On macOS, in Terminal: defaults write com.adobe.CSXS.11 PlayerDebugMode 1. Adobe's signature check fails on some machines; this tells it to load the panel anyway. |
| The dot never turns green | Something else may be holding port 7878. Close other panels and start the app again with only LazyLord open. |
| Figma says it cannot connect | Open a LazyLord panel in Photoshop, Illustrator or After Effects first. In a browser, allow Figma to reach apps on this device if it asks; Safari never allows it, so use Chrome, Edge, Firefox or the desktop app. |
| Something arrived wrong | Open Log in the panel and copy what it says, then email me that and a screenshot of both sides (or open an issue). The panel lists everything it could not rebuild, so the answer is usually already in there. |
More symptoms, the messages the panel prints and how to read them are in docs/troubleshooting.md.
Is it really free? Yes. MIT licensed — free to use, at work too, and free to change.
Does my work leave my computer? No. The apps talk to each other over your own machine's loopback address, the same way a local preview server works. There is no server, no account, and no telemetry. Unplug the internet and it still works.
The one thing the panel fetches from the internet is the number of the newest LazyLord release on GitHub, about twice a day, so it can tell you about updates. Nothing about you or your work goes with it, and unticking Check for updates in an app's panel stops it there.
Do I need Overlord, Node.js, or an extension manager? No. The download is self-contained.
Why does Photoshop call it "Extensions (legacy)"? That is Adobe's own menu name for this kind of panel. Nothing is wrong.
Will it touch my existing layers? Only if you ask. Add always makes new layers. Update replaces what LazyLord itself made earlier — and it notices when you have edited one of those layers by hand. It never prompts mid-transfer: you choose beforehand with On conflict, either Overwrite (the default) or Keep my edits, and either way the layer is named in the list of fallbacks.
Can I use it with Figma in the browser? Yes, in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, once the plugin is installed from Figma Community (a plugin added from the download runs only in the desktop app). If the browser asks whether figma.com may reach apps on this device, allow it — that is the LazyLord panel. Safari blocks it, so use another browser there.
Windows and macOS both? Yes. The installer for each is in the download.
LazyLord is open source and the code is meant to be read. Building it, running the test suites and how the pieces fit together are in docs/development.md. Packaging a signed release of your own is in PUBLISHING.md, and docs/history.md keeps the notes from how it was built. Everything else is indexed in docs/.
Issues and pull requests are welcome.
LazyLord is designed and built by Raisul Sohan.
If it saved you an afternoon, say hello. If it did not, tell me why — that is more useful.
MIT. Use it, change it, ship it. Adobe, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and Figma are trademarks of their respective owners.