Copy frames with layer properties

Last updated on Oct 27, 2025

Duplicate animation frames while preserving layer visibility, position, opacity, and effects in Adobe Photoshop.

Copying frames with their layer properties intact saves time and ensures consistency throughout your animation sequence. This procedure helps when creating frame-based animations where you need to preserve specific layer attributes (such as position, opacity, or effects) while making incremental changes between frames. It's particularly useful for animations that require consistent styling across frames with only small positional or content changes.

Select the frame in the Timeline panel that contains the layer properties you want to copy.

Select the panel menu   icon and select Copy Frame.

Select on the frame after which you want to insert the new frame.

Select the panel menu   icon, select Paste Frame, and select one of the following options:

  • Replace Frames: Replaces the selected frames with the copied frames. No new layers are added. The properties of each existing layer in the destination frames are replaced by those of each copied layer.
  • Paste Over Selection: Adds the contents of the pasted frames as new layers in the image. When you paste frames into the same image, using this option doubles the number of layers in the image.
  • Paste Before Selection: Adds the copied frames before the selected frame. When you paste frames between images, new layers are added to the image; however, only the pasted layers are visible in the new frames, and the existing layers are hidden.
  • Paste After Selection: Adds the copied frames after the selected frame. When you paste frames between images, new layers are added to the image; however, only the pasted layers are visible in the new frames, and the existing layers are hidden.

Select Link Added Layers, to link pasted layers in the Layers panel. This option works only when pasting frames into another document. Select it when you plan to reposition the pasted layers as a unit.

Select OK.