Keynote is a much-loved application with a huge number of fans throughout the world. Its main attraction is its striking graphics and animation effects.

This chapter is mainly for those who are unfamiliar with Keynote but may be using Pages or Numbers without realizing that some of their work may be better presented in Keynote, be it a condensed, bullet-point summary of a long academic work or a clear presentation, with charts and graphs from a complex spreadsheet.

If the main unit of a document is the page in Pages and the spreadsheet in Numbers, in Keynote, it is the slide. Each slide has a themed (graphically designed) canvas—the space where textboxes, shapes, and images are placed. It is enough to simply understand this, in order to start using Keynote. While we may have to spend some time learning to use animation effects, the main set of tools for working with text and images is the same as in other iWork applications.

Recipes in this chapter are designed for those who are reticent about giving Keynote a try and may even doubt that there is any point doing so. But once you've discovered the possibilities and fun of Keynote, you'll be hooked. Indeed, the restrictions of the slide—where text has to be presented in short clear chunks and graphics must be easy to grasp—may improve your efficiency when working in other applications.