Onion skinning lets you view the contents of frames preceding and following the currently selected frame. You can smoothly animate objects without having to flip back and forth through them. The term onion skinning comes from a traditional animation technique of using thin, translucent tracing paper to view animated sequences.

When onion skinning is turned on, objects in frames before or after the current frame are dimmed so that you can distinguish them from objects in the current frame.

By default, Multi-Frame Editing is enabled, which means you can select and edit dimmed objects in other frames without leaving the current frame. You can use the Select Behind tool to select objects in frames in sequential order.

To adjust the number of frames visible before and after the current frame:

  1. In the Frames panel, click the Onion Skinning button.
  2. Select a display option:

    No Onion Skinning turns off onion skinning and displays only the contents of the current frame.

    Show Next Frame displays the contents of the current frame and the next frame.

    Before and After displays the contents of the current and adjacent frames.

    Show All Frames displays the contents of all frames.

    Custom sets a custom number of frames and controls the opacity of onion skinning.

    Multi-Frame Editing lets you select and edit all visible objects. Deselect this option to select and edit only objects in the current frame.