How make image adjustments directly in Keynote on the Mac

Dan Wassink 0:02
In this video, we’re going to look at image formatting options we have available to us in Keynote. This includes how we can resize crop mask, and even make colors transparent. Let’s see how we work with images in Keynote on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac. So I’m looking at my Keynote presentation here. Let’s go and create a new slide. So I’m just going to go up to add slide here. And what we’re going to do is create a blank slide. So I click on it. And let’s just go down to blank. The first thing we need to do is add an image. How do we add an image? Well, all we have to do is just go up to media here in the toolbar.

And then we go and select how we want to add our image, I’m just going to go with an image from my photos app. So we’re going to go with photos here. I select it. And now all I have to do is just select the photo that I want. So I’m going to go with this photo here. All I do is just click on it one time, and then it adds it to my slide. So if we look at this slide here, it looks a little bit dark, I would like to make some adjustments to this. While with Keynote, what we’re able to do is make adjustments, we can brighten it up, we can adjust the contrast, the first thing that we need to do is we need to make sure that our photo is selected, we can see that my photo here is selected, I have these white squares here along the left, right, top and bottom as well as in each corner. This tells me that it is selected, I want to make some adjustments, what we do is we make sure that we’re looking at our formatting tools here. And then being that I have my image selected, we can click on image.

Under image, we have a number of tools. So the one that we’re going to look at right now is adjustments. So from here, I have a couple of simple adjustments, I can increase the exposure and the saturation, I just take these sliders here and drag them to the left or right, you can see what is happening to that photo. So I’m going to increase the exposure here. Now if you want to even do more with it, what you can do is you can go to this little icon here, this is where we have advanced adjustments. When I click on this, we have a new window that opens up. And from here, I can make further adjustments. I can adjust the saturation, the highlights the shadows, the sharpness, I can D noise it, I even have a histogram here.

So we can even go with further adjustments than just our exposure and saturation here. And then if I just want to let Keynote make the adjustments for me, I can do that too, by just clicking on enhance here. So that’s how we make adjustments. What about resizing it, while being that it is selected here, all I have to do is just take one of these squares here and drag it, it does keep it in proportion. So I just click and I drag and you’re going to see keeps it in proportion. If I want to move it, I just click anywhere within the image and I move it where I want. We can also crop it when we crop but basically what we’re doing is we’re masking it, cropping and masking is a term that you can use interchangeably.

So I have these black squares here at the top, and I have them at the bottom, I want to crop them up or mask them out. In order to do that, all we have to do is just double click on it. Remember we have these white squares here. Watch what happens when I double click on it they turn into black squares. Now what I’m able to do is adjust the mask or crop it. So I want to crop or mask out these black squares, all I do is just take this icon here, I drag it down this handle here I should say. And now I’ve just masked out that black bar at the top. We do the same thing at the bottom. Just drag it up. And now I’ve just cropped or masked that one out as well. When I am done, I can hit return. And we can see I have my new masked image. I want to crop it again. I’m going to deselect it, we do not have anything selected here. I want to crop it or mask it again.

I double click it. We have our black squares and I can crop it our mascot. I want to resize it again, I click outside. I click on it one time, and I can resize it here. Now when we’re in that masking tool, we do have a few other options. I’m going to double click on it again. We’re in our masking mode. Our handles here are black. If we go to the bottom of the image you’re going to see I have another little slider here with some icons. What I’m able to do is adjust the size of the image within that masks. So think of a frame a picture frame. You have a photo within a frame setting on your wall. With this little slider here, what I’m able to do is adjust how much of that picture is in that frame. So I could make it just a little postage stamp, or I could make it cover the entire frame. Let’s go and adjust this and see what I mean. I just drag this to the left or right, and you can see that I’m adjusting how much of that photos in that frame, I am not adjusting the frame, I go outside here.

Basically, what I’m doing is I’m zooming in on to the photo. Now what I can do mean that I’m still on my masking tool here is I can drag this around and reposition my photo within that frame. So now when I click on done here, we can see that the actual image size didn’t change as it relates to the slide. But I did zoom in. Basically, what I did is I held the frame at the same size, so the actual photo is the same size. But then I adjusted the zoom, so I zoomed into that photo or zoomed into that mask. Let’s do that, again, I double click on it, we have our black handles, we can also see that we have this little floating window here, all I do is just drag this back and forth. And once I have it to the size I want, I drag it around to fill up the frame, I place it where I want in that frame. And then I click on Done. So that’s how we can adjust the size of the photo, we can make adjustments, we can adjust the mask, we can reposition the photo around in that mask. What else can we do? Well, we can also make a color transparent. This is what instant alpha is. Now what you really need to do in order for this to work is have a solid color, it really will not work good on this photograph here, you need a solid color, a perfect example would be a logo, you have a logo and maybe it has a white background, you want to make that white background transparent, so it blends in with the slide. This is where instant Alpha comes in. Let’s take a look at that, I’m going to delete this photo here.

Now over on my desktop, I’m just going to slide this over to the right, I have these wooden shoes, I want to add this, let’s just say this was my logo, all I have to do is just take this and drag it onto the slide, it adds it to my slide. But you’re going to see that it has a white background here, I want to make that white background disappear. Let’s go ahead and move this in the center here. So I want to make this white background disappear. This is where instant Alpha comes in. All I have to do is just click on this. And then I just click on the color to make it transparent. So I click on the white background to make it transparent. So now I just click in here, you’re going to see that I have a little square there.

And then when I click in there, what I’m going to do is drag it up and down, you’re going to see a little percentage, this will allow me to adjust how much of that color I am selecting. If it is just solid white, it makes it really easy. But if you have a little bit of a grade in there, what you may need to do is adjust it. So I’m just going to click here, we can see we have the 0% I let go, you’re going to see that it is masked just a little bit there has a little bit of a different color. But that’s only because I’m in my instant Alpha mode. When I click on done here, what it’s going to do is make that color transparent. So let’s go ahead and do that. And now we can see, we no longer have that white background. But if we look in here, you’re gonna see that I still have some white jaggies here. This is where that adjustment where the percentage can come into play. So let’s do this again. I’m going to go to instant alpha. And then we click on Reset because we’re going to start over. And now I click in here, but this time, I’m going to drag it up and down. Remember how we saw that 0% When I click it up or drag it up, what it’s going to do is it’s going to go from one to two to 3%. The further I drag it up, the higher it’s going to go. Also what it’s going to do is make more of that white collar transparent. So let’s go ahead and do that I

click you’re gonna see it says 0%. But now when I drag it up, you can see it’s climbing. It’s 8%. Let’s just go extreme here. So now I’m at 71%. Watch what happens if you go too far. Watch what happens. So I’m going to select this. And now we click on Done. What it did is it made part of the wooden shoes transparent so basically what you need to do is you need to find a balance. So let’s do that one more time. Instant alpha here. I click on Reset. And now I click in here and then I drag and then I just kind of watch those wooden shoes. If I go up too high, you’re gonna see that it has started to change color there. That’s not what I So I’m just going to bring it back down here a little bit. Let’s just go with, we’ll just go to like 8% here. Now when I let go, watch what happens. Click on done, we can see that my wooden shoe here has a nice border around it the widest transparent, I can see all of the wooden shoe. Now what I’m able to do is just put this into the corner here, I can crop it or resize it, I’m not going to crop it, I’m just going to resize it. And now that wouldn’t shoe there will be in the corner of that slide. If I were to add this to a slide layout, which I talked about in another video, I could actually place it on every slide just by adding it to the slide layout. So that’s how we work with our images in Keynote.

Basically, what we’re able to do is make minor adjustments, we can adjust the saturation, we can adjust the contrast, we even have advanced options, what we need to do is we need to go to format, and then we go to image. In addition to make an adjustments, we can also resize it and crop it or mask it, we just double click on it. If you see white handles around the corner and around the top, bottom, left and right, you’re going to resize it if you see black handles, it’s going to adjust the mask. And then you’re going to see a slider when you’re in this mode down at the bottom you drag that slider to the left or right to adjust the image size within that mask. And then lastly, what we can do is we can make colors transparent. This works really well with solid colors. If it’s a photograph, it doesn’t work so well. But this is instant alpha you just click on instant alpha, select the color that you want to remove. You may have to drag it up and down to make some minor adjustments. Click on done and that color will then be transparent. So that’s how we work with images in Keynote on the Mac.