Automatic background removal is convenient. Click a button, wait two seconds, done. But anyone who has spent real time on image-heavy design work knows that “good enough” and “actually right” are two very different things. Hair strands, soft shadows, semi-transparent fabric, complex product edges: these are exactly the situations where one-click tools fall apart and leave you patching mistakes for longer than the original task should have taken.
Mask Master is a Figma plugin built by designer and developer Evgenii Shmoish that takes a different approach entirely. Instead of handing control to an algorithm and hoping for the best, it gives you a dedicated masking canvas inside Figma with real selection tools: magic wand, picker, brush refinement, threshold controls, and image adjustments. You build the mask yourself, deliberately, then apply it back to your document.
It is a small but meaningful shift in philosophy. Automation handles the easy cases. This handles everything else.
What Mask Master Actually Does for Your Figma Workflow
Magic Wand Selection with Threshold Control
The magic wand tool selects image areas based on color similarity, but what makes it useful here is the threshold control sitting right beside it. You can dial in exactly how aggressively the selection spreads across similar tones. Tight threshold for a complex edge, wide threshold for a clean background: you decide, not the algorithm. That single control changes what is otherwise a blunt instrument into something precise.
Brush-Based Refinement
After an initial selection, edges rarely look perfect. The brush tools let you paint in or erase areas of the mask manually. This is where the real work happens on tricky images. You zoom in, you clean up stray pixels, you soften or sharpen exactly the parts that need it. No guessing about what the tool will do next.
Image Adjustments Inside the Masking Canvas
Mask Master includes adjustment controls directly in the plugin canvas: contrast, saturation, hue shift, and per-channel levels. These are not export settings. They help you read the image more clearly while you work, so a low-contrast edge that is hard to select can be temporarily boosted to make the selection cleaner. It is a practical detail that saves a lot of back-and-forth.
Smooth Edge Output and Direct Figma Export
Once your selection looks right, a smooth edge toggle softens the mask boundary before you apply it. The final mask then goes directly back into your Figma file, applied to the original image layer. No exporting, no re-importing, no leaving Figma at any point in the process.
Priya at 10pm, Trying to Ship a Landing Page by Morning
Priya is a freelance UI designer based in Bangalore. At around 10pm on a Tuesday, she was finishing a product landing page for a skincare client. The hero section needed a clean cutout of a model holding a glass bottle. The background was a soft gradient, close in tone to the subject’s light dress in several spots.
She tried the automatic removal tool she normally uses. The result clipped part of the dress and left a blurry halo around the arm. Fixing it in Figma natively, with rectangles and clip masks, was not going to work cleanly. Switching to Photoshop would mean exporting, editing, re-exporting, and re-importing, easily 20 minutes of friction for a two-minute visual fix.
She installed Mask Master, opened the plugin on the image, and used the magic wand with a lower threshold to isolate the gradient background without biting into the dress. She brushed back two small areas near the shoulder where the selection had crept too far. Adjusted contrast briefly to see the edge more clearly, then brushed those tight spots clean. Smooth edge toggle on, Apply hit. Total time: about seven minutes.
The cutout dropped back into the Figma frame exactly as expected. She shipped the file before midnight.
How the Masking Process Works, Step by Step
Step 1: Select Your Image in Figma
Click on any image layer in your Figma file, then launch the Mask Master plugin from the plugins menu. The plugin opens a dedicated canvas with your image loaded and ready to work on.
Step 2: Build Your Selection
Use the magic wand to make an initial area selection, adjusting the threshold slider to control how far the selection spreads. The picker tool lets you sample specific colors to add or subtract from the active selection.
Step 3: Refine with Brushes and Adjustments
Switch to the brush tools to manually clean up edges. Use the image adjustment panel to boost contrast or shift hue temporarily if a particular edge is hard to see clearly. Keyboard hotkeys are available for all tools, so switching between them stays fast.
Step 4: Apply and Return to Figma
Toggle smooth edge if you want softened boundaries, then hit Apply. The finished mask is written directly back to your Figma document, attached to the original image layer. No extra steps required.
Pricing
Mask Master is available as a one-time purchase of $7, payable directly inside Figma through an in-app purchase. There are no recurring fees and no subscription. You pay once and the plugin is yours to use indefinitely, licensed under the Figma Community Paid Resource License.
Worth It If You Work with Real Images in Figma
If your Figma work rarely involves photography or complex image cutouts, Mask Master will sit unused. But if you regularly build marketing visuals, product pages, thumbnails, or any layout where image quality actually matters, the $7 price is almost nothing compared to the time it saves on even one tricky cutout. Try it at the Figma Community page and see how much faster careful masking can actually be.
