Migrating from the previous Designer
Migrating from the previous Designer
If you've used Magnific Designer at magnific.com/designer, the editor you're about to use is its successor. It carries the same name, but it's been rebuilt from scratch on a new technology stack so it could do things the previous version couldn’t: real-time collaboration, multi-page documents, dynamic content that bind to AI-powered workflows, an AI-native canvas, and a much faster rendering engine.
This article is for existing Magnific Designer users. It covers what's changing, what to do with your existing documents, what's better in the new version, and how to find your footing fast.
If you're new to Designer entirely, you can skip this article and go straight to the Designer overview.
In this article
The short version
The new Designer is a different product on a different stack. It is not a redesign of the old one, it's a ground-up rebuild.
Your existing documents at magnific.com/designer cannot be opened in the new Designer. The file formats are incompatible.
Your generated assets and uploaded media in Magnific are not affected. Those live in your account library independently of the editor.
There is no automatic migration tool. You'll need to download your old documents and, where relevant, rebuild them in the new Designer.
Why the rebuild
Some of what's possible in the new Designer requires a different foundation:
Real-time multi-user editing on the canvas with a single-editor lock and presence indicators.
A live canvas with no page reloads. Every action renders immediately, including AI generations applied to elements in place.
First-class integration with Spaces workflows, so a design can be wired to other automation nodes via dynamic content and connections.
Multi-page documents with mixed dimensions. An Instagram post, an Instagram story, and a business card side-by-side in one document.
AI on a selected element. Remove background, Auto Layers, Ask Agent.
A pro-grade adjustments panel with controls expected by people moving from photo-editing tools.
A serious export model. Per-element configuration, four formats, fluent scale syntax, custom file naming, PDF combining.
What you keep
Some things travel with you across the move because they live in Magnific, not in the editor:
Your account, plan, and credits.
Your asset library. Every image and media file uploaded to Magnific, and every AI generation you've produced. These remain accessible from the new Designer's library.
Your brand fonts, colors, and palettes. You can apply them in the new Designer the same way you did in the previous one.
Your purchase history and subscriptions.
What you don't keep:
Your designs (the actual project files) from magnific.com/designer.
Direct links shared from the previous Designer. Those URLs will stop working after retirement.
Custom templates you saved in the previous Designer. Those need to be rebuilt as templates in the new one.
What's better in the new Designer
A concrete, non-marketing tour of what's genuinely new.
AI built into the canvas
The previous Designer offered AI tools as separate features (AI Writer, AI Image Generator, Background Remover, etc.). In the new Designer, AI is part of editing:
Remove Background. Isolate the subject of an image on a transparent layer with a single click. No controls or confirmation step.
Ask (Agent). Send a natural language instruction to Magnific Agent, which interprets and executes it directly on the canvas. Labeled Beta.
Auto Layers. Decompose any image into editable layers (text, subject, background).
The previous Designer's Background Remover is replaced by Image masks plus Trim transparent plus the broader AI tooling. The previous Designer's AI Writer has no direct counterpart inside Designer. Magnific's broader assistant covers writing.
Designer's action bar with the AI options Ask, Remove background, and Auto layers on a selected element.
Integration with Spaces workflows
This is the biggest single conceptual addition.
The new Designer is also a node inside a Spaces workflow. That means a design can be wired to receive content from other automation nodes (image generations, text outputs, results from earlier steps) via connections linked to dynamic content on the canvas. The same template can produce a different output every time the workflow runs.
This makes design automatable: one design template plus one small workflow can produce hundreds of variants.
See Connections, inputs and dynamic content and Designer in a Spaces workflow.
Designer as a node in a Spaces workflow, fed by an Image Generator and lists of text and images that supply the dynamic content.
Standalone tools that ship as separate entry points
In addition to the editor itself, the new Designer ships a standalone tools suite at /app/tools/design:
Auto Layers. Turn any image into an editable design (Single or Batch).
Explorer templates. The full template gallery as a browse experience.
More tools will be added over time. Each lives at its own URL and exposes the relevant subset of the Designer engine without requiring you to open a full editing session.
Navigating to /app/tools/design, with the standalone tools: Designer, Explore templates, and Auto layers.
Real-time multi-user editing
The new Designer supports real-time collaboration with a single-editor lock and presence indicators. Multiple people can have the design open at once: one is editing, the rest are viewing live. The previous Designer was single-user.
Presence indicator in Designer showing which user is editing the design in real time.
Multi-page documents
The new Designer treats a project as a stack of independent pages, each with its own dimensions and unit. You can mix an Instagram post (1080x1080 px), an Instagram story (1080x1920 px), and a business card (85x55 mm) in one document. The previous Designer was effectively single-page.
Multi-page document in Designer with pages of different dimensions (banner, Post, and Story) in a single project.
A serious export model
Exporting in the new Designer is configurable per element with multiple outputs per click:
Four formats: PNG, JPEG, WebP, PDF.
Scale syntax: 2x, 500w, 300h.
Per-element naming with prefix/suffix and auto-disambiguation.
PDF with multi-page combining.
Designer's export modal with per-element format, scale, and naming options.
Auto-save and named version history
Continuous autosave plus user-named save points with a timeline view and one-click restore.
Designer's Version history panel with autosaves and named versions on a timeline, with a restore option.
Pro-grade adjustments
The image adjustments panel offers exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, brightness, saturation, temperature, gamma, sharpness, and clarity. The standard pro panel. The previous Designer had a more limited adjustments set.
Designer's Image adjustments panel and its professional filter and effect controls.
How to prepare for the migration
The previous Designer at magnific.com/designer will accept document downloads before retirement. Once retired, the documents will no longer be accessible.
1. Inventory what you have
Open magnific.com/designer and review the projects in your library. Identify:
Active projects you’re currently using or shipping. Download these first.
Reference projects you keep around as templates or examples. Decide if they’re worth preserving.
Old projects you no longer use. You can skip these.
2. Download the documents you want to keep
For each document you want to preserve:
Open the document in the previous Designer.
Export it to a format that captures the visual state: PDF for multi-page or print, PNG for screen, both for safety.
Also download the source file if the previous Designer offers that option, so you have the editable structure even if you can’t reopen it directly.
PDF export from the previous Designer to preserve a document before migrating.
3. Save anything that’s outside the document
Some content lives in your account library and is unaffected, but some is bound to specific documents:
Brand colors and palettes. note them as hex values you can re-enter in the new Designer.
Custom fonts. confirm they’re available in the new Designer’s font library; if not, note the names.
Reusable layouts. Take screenshots or notes; the structure won’t auto-transfer.
4. Rebuild high-value designs in the new Designer
For the designs you want to continue working on, start a new project in the new Designer and rebuild from your downloaded reference. The new Templates explorer (/app/tools/design) is a faster starting point for common formats than rebuilding pixel-by-pixel.
For images extracted from your previous designs, you can use Auto Layers to decompose any exported design back into editable layers as a starting point (text, subject, background) saving you time over rebuilding from scratch.
Frequently asked questions
Why aren't my old documents compatible?
The previous Designer and the new Designer are built on different rendering engines, different document formats, and different runtime stacks. A migration tool would have to either lose fidelity (rendering the old document as a flat image) or rebuild every element from scratch (which is what you'd do manually anyway).
Rather than ship a partial migration that produces unpredictable results, we're being clear: download what you need, and rebuild what matters most.
How do I download my old documents?
From magnific.com/designer:
Open the project
Open the project you want to download.
Use Download or Export
Click the Download or Export action.
Pick the format
PDF preserves multi-page layouts; PNG preserves the visual state of a single page.
Save the file
Save it to your computer.
If the previous Designer offers a project-file export (a format intended for reopening), download that too. It's not openable in the new Designer, but it's the closest thing to a true backup.
Will my AI generations be lost?
No. Generations live in your Magnific library (creations, generated images, etc.), independently of the previous Designer. They remain accessible from the new Designer and from the rest of Magnific.
What is bound to the old documents is the specific arrangement of those generations within a design: the layout, the typography choices, the effects. That arrangement is what needs to be rebuilt.
Will my brand assets be lost?
Uploaded brand assets (logos, brand images, custom fonts you uploaded) remain in your library and are accessible from the new Designer. Colors and palettes will need to be re-entered into the new Designer's palette system.
Will old shared links keep working?
No. Shared links from magnific.com/designer will stop resolving after retirement. If you’ve published links externally (in blog posts, emails, documentation), update them once you have the equivalent design rebuilt in the new Designer.
Can I use the previous Designer in parallel during the window?
Yes, until the retirement date. We recommend committing to the new Designer for any new work as soon as you're comfortable, so you don't accumulate more designs in a system that's going away.
Will I get help migrating?
For high-volume customers and teams, the support team can help prioritise which designs to rebuild and offer hands-on guidance. Reach out through standard Magnific support channels.
There is no paid migration service offered at this time, and there is no automatic migration tool.
My whole team uses the previous Designer. How do we move together?
This applies to your account, which includes everyone on the same workspace. Coordinate internally:
Inventory all active projects across your team.
Prioritise by what's currently shipping or being worked on.
Assign owners for each high-value project to download and rebuild.
Set a hard internal deadline before the retirement date to give yourself buffer.
For teams, the new Designer's real-time collaboration is a meaningful improvement worth coordinating around.
I rely on a feature in the previous Designer that I can't find in the new one. What now?
The new Designer is feature-rich but not literally a one-to-one replacement. A few likely cases:
AI Writer. There's no in-editor writer. Use Magnific's broader assistant for writing.
AI Translator. Not currently part of the in-editor surface. Use other Magnific tooling.
Specific template categories that existed in the previous gallery. The new Templates explorer covers the same core formats; specific gallery items may differ.
A specific export setting. The new Designer's export model is configurable per element. Most workflows are expressible.
If a critical feature is missing, please report it. Many gaps are scheduled additions rather than permanent omissions.
Is the new Designer free?
Pricing for Designer follows your Magnific plan. AI tools consume credits per generation (or run unlimited if you're on an unlimited plan); the editor itself is part of Magnific. The previous Designer's free tier is succeeded by your existing Magnific plan with no change to your subscription.
Where do I learn the new Designer?
Start at the Designer overview. For specific topics see the workspace anatomy, the inspector, templates as a starting point, and exporting your finished work.
If you want to come up to speed on the new capabilities (the ones the previous Designer didn't have), focus on connections and dynamic content, the on-canvas AI tooling, and Auto Layers (the most useful tool for converting your old image deliverables into editable starting points).
A note on tone
We know this is a forced migration and we don’t want to dress it up as anything else. The previous Designer served well; the new one does things the previous one couldn’t. If anything in this article is unclear, please reach out: making the move smooth is genuinely a priority.
Feature mapping: old to new
A reference for finding the equivalent of what you used to do.
Previous Designer | New Designer |
|---|---|
Template gallery | Templates explorer + Using templates |
Text tool | Text and fonts (same idea, deeper controls) |
Image upload | Importing media |
Background Remover | Image masks + Trim transparent + Ask Agent |
AI Image Generator | Text-to-Image and Reimagine |
AI Writer | Not present in the editor; use Magnific's broader assistant |