# Should I insert as SVG or PNG?

> SVG almost always. It gives you a real Figma frame of vector and text layers you can recolour, restyle and put in components. PNG gives you one flat picture — pick it only when you want the chart frozen exactly as it is.

> **Tip:** PNG is drawn at twice the pixel density, so it stays sharp on a retina screen and in exports. Its background is transparent unless you set one under Appearance in the Configuration tab.

> **Note:** PNG suits very dense charts — heatmaps and calendars with thousands of cells — where the SVG version would land as an unwieldy pile of layers. It also freezes the typography, so nothing can be substituted or nudged later.

> **Careful:** You are not locked in, but switching is destructive. Pressing Update PNG on a chart you inserted as SVG replaces the layer tree with a flat image, and going back the other way rebuilds it from scratch — either way, anything you restyled inside the chart in Figma is lost.

## Steps

1. Press + SVG for the normal case. Figma rebuilds the chart as layers — every bar, line, gridline and label is its own object, and the labels are real text you can select and edit.
2. Press + PNG when you want a picture instead. The chart is drawn as a single rectangle with the image as its fill, at the same width and height an SVG would have had.
3. Either way you get the same things: the chart is centred in your viewport, its proportions are locked, and its settings travel with it — so Edit Chart reopens it and Update SVG or Update PNG replaces it later.
4. The plugin remembers which one you chose. Reopen that chart later and the same button is highlighted, so updates keep the format you started with.

_Topics: insert, svg, png_

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Install Figma Charts: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1345221583582136577/figma-charts

More Figma Charts help: https://systergon.com/figma-charts/help