i've been using keynote 2 since june and i'm impressed with how glossy its presentations can be. it's pretty cool to see how your audience ahhs and oohs with every transition or animation effect. there are, however, areas where powerpoint still stands out like drawing freeform shapes, availability of clipart, more free templates and more options with integrating sound and video. it seems like with keynote, you would have to prepare all your art, image, sound and video clips before importing them into your project. i'm open to any tips on how to make the process better and faster, particularly when deadlines loom ahead. thanks!
I do a lot of presentations either on keynote or powerpoint... not that i'm an expert, but its true, freeform drawing is not possible in keynote. It is best to do it in Adobe illustrator or Omnigraffle first then drag it onto your slide. Whatever pix or image, video or audio clip you wish to insert can also be dragged onto the slide... very simple. on templates, havent found any free downloadable keynote templates as yet... however you can design / make your own and save it in the template folder for future use. will keep you posted if i discover anything new as i have to do another presentation in the next few day... may discover something interesting... it happens everytime i make my slides...
thanks for the feedback. i was hoping there was some kind of upgrade, plug-in or gallery to easily manage clipart, drawing tools, etc. i guess it no choice but to take the long-cut. regarding templates, there are a few sites that give away a few free templates - keynotegallery.com or keynotethemepark.com. the best templates i've seen can be found at keynotepro.com. i've purchased a few sets from them. or you can make your own.
hi guys, is there an option in keynote where i can play a sound all troughout the presentation? oops just found out how....
With these shortcomings you guys are discussing with keynote 2, are there any improvements with Keynote 3? i too need a bit of a good tutorial to maximize this app. Thanks!
http://www.keynoteuser.com/tips/ Click the link and you'll find some tutorial for keynote. I just love using keynote, more than powerpoint. Been using it ever since.
Please check your toolbars, Shape. I wonder, why do you need to draw free form shape? I do my Keynote every week for my design class, most of the time few hours before my class on Saturday morning and my needs are basic, clean, straighforward presentation. Cliparts is neither a problem, thanks to google, I can simply drag and drop the images I want. I believe our need of template(s) varies depending on our style. Please check your toolbars, see Inspector. Keynote is very well integrated with you home directory's iTunes and movies library. Again, I believe its how you present your topic or particular presentation requirement. Albeit I do graphic design, I rarely prepare my materials using Photoshop. Apple's Preview and iPhoto software can do basic image adjustment, cut and crop tasks. I only have two gripe though, One is that Keynote can't open newer version of Keynote files. and Two, my presentation always ends up way off topic as I am oblige to explain Keynote, how Keynote work wonders and why its far better (visual aesthetics) than Powerpoint.
