Choosing a Theme

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All Keynote presentations begin with a theme. A theme provides a set of master slides and a graphic look for a presentation. Think of a theme as a template from which you can build your presentation.

When you first create a Keynote document, you must choose a theme.

To choose a presentation theme

1.
Launch Keynote.

or

If you're already in Keynote, choose File > New, or press .

A new window appears, and a sheet that allows you to choose a theme for your presentation, called the Theme Chooser, slides down from the top of the window ( Figure 2.1 ).

Figure 2.1. Choose the theme for your new presentation from the Theme Chooser.


2.
Click to select one of the available themes from the scrolling area of the Theme Chooser.

Apple provides 20 themes with Keynote, but you can easily download and install additional themes.

3.
From the Presentation Size pop-up menu, choose the size that you want your slides to be.

Apple's Keynote presentations come in one of two sizes: 1024x768 or the smaller 800x600 pixels. You can decide which size to use based on the output device you'll be using for your presentation. In some cases, such as presentations for small groups, you'll be using a monitor to show your presentation, so you can use the larger size. If you'll be using a video projector, you should check to see which display resolutions the projector supports. Most newer projectors can show 1024x768, but older projectors will be limited to 800x600. If you're not sure what the projector can handle, it's safer to use the larger size. All of Keynote's built-in themes allow you to choose from either of the two sizes. Additional themes that you download or purchase may or may not have both sizes available, or may include custom sizes, such as themes sized to fit widescreen monitors .

4.
Click Choose.

Keynote takes a moment to build the theme, then creates the new document window, using the first slide master in the theme. This is almost always the Title & Subtitle slide master.

Using Custom Themes

Keynote's built-in themes are pretty good, but they're hardly the last word in presentations. A small cottage industry of Keynote theme makers has sprung up since Keynote's release. These folks have created many Keynote themes; some are free for downloading, and some are for sale (see Appendix A).

After you obtain these custom themes (or create your own), you must put them in one of two places on your hard disk so that Keynote can display them in the Theme Chooser sheet. You can put them in harddisk/Library/Application Support/iWork/Keynote/Themes or in home/Library/Application Support/ iWork/Keynote/Themes . Either location will work fine. If you use the first choice, the themes will be available to all users of your machine ( assuming that you have multiple users enabled on your machine). The second choice makes the themes available only to your user account, which can be useful in some cases. For example, if you have multiple people using your Mac, each of whom is creating Keynote presentations, putting custom themes under the home directory allows each user to have their own set of custom themes.

You don't actually have to put a theme file in one of these locations to use it in Keynote. If you have a theme file elsewhere on your hard disk, you can simply double-click on it and work in the new file to create your presentation. This file will not appear in the Theme Chooser, however.


Tips

  • Keynote's built-in themes will always appear first in the Theme Chooser sheet. Any themes that you add will show up in alphabetical order after the built-in themes. See the "Using Custom Themes" sidebar to learn where to put themes that you've created or downloaded so that Keynote can use them.

  • Custom themes can come in sizes other than the two standard sizes. For example, you could have a theme that fits a widescreen monitor, at 1440x900.

  • See Appendix A for a list of sites where you can find Keynote themes for free download or purchase.

  • If you don't want the Theme Chooser to automatically appear every time you create a new Keynote document, choose Keynote > Preferences, click the General tab, and uncheck "Show Theme Chooser dialog."

  • A new feature in Keynote 2 is that even if a theme comes in only one of the two standard sizes, both sizes will always appear in the Theme Chooser. That's because Keynote builds the other size on the fly for you when you create a new document.


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Keynote 2 for Mac OS X. Visual QuickStart Guide
Keynote 2 for Mac OS X. Visual QuickStart Guide
ISBN: 321197755
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 179

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